Montana's only Congressman is out there touting his support for a ban on earmarks (also called "appropriations") for fiscal year 2011. In case you missed this tweet from Dennis Rehberg:
"I supported the GOP-wide EARMARK MORATORIUM. It's time for an all-of-the-above approach to TRUE spending reform. This is only a first step."
So, this means we can expect Dennis Rehberg not to request/support/tout any earmarks for fiscal year 2011, right? That's interesting, considering his fiscal year 2011 earmark request form is on his website. And it's interesting considering he told the Great Falls Tribune just a few weeks ago:
"Earmarks are not the problem... They direct money that already exists within the program to a particular area, because who knows their district more than we do?"
So which is it? Is Congressman Rehberg against earmarks, as he wants Montanans to think, or is he for earmarks, as he wants Montanans to think?
Confused? You're not alone.
Just last year, Dennis Rehberg took credit for "securing" an earmark for the Watson's Children's Shelter in Missoula. That earmark was tucked away in H.R. 2847, a congressional appropriations bill. Here's what Congressman Rehberg said at the time:
"I'm pleased I was able to secure this crucial funding to help make a real difference in the lives of Montana children."
Of course, that was after Congressman Rehberg voted against H.R. 2847... and against funding for the Watson's Children's Shelter.
I guess only a professional politician can "secure" funding by voting against it. Let's see how much funding he "secures" for fiscal year 2011, even though he supports "the GOP-wide EARMARK MORATORIUM."
The idea of reimporting cheap prescription drugs from Canada, where drugs cost a fraction of what the identical medicine costs here, has been dormant for many months, if not years. Then, yesterday, Schweitzer stormed into the china shop and shattered some dishes.
Two questions arise. First, why had the issue gone dormant? Short Answer: The Obama Administration cut a deal with the Pharmaceutical Industry, early in the healthcare reform game, in which Obama pledged to kill any efforts to reimport drugs from Canada in return for the Drug Industry running TV Ads and other media--$80 million worth--in support of Obama's healthcare plan.
That's a shady deal by any measurement, unless the ultimate Obama plan finds some way to drastically reduce or subsidize prescription prices. Thus far the plan does not appear to do so.
The second question is what the White House and/or Secretary Sebelius is going to tell Schweitzer. Has Schweitzer gotten too cute? Has he poked the tiger one time too many? Will Obama somehow retaliate or freeze-out our Governor? Or, has Schweitzer put them in an impossible position and thus revived a very important issue, and put it on course for some sort of resolution? Perhaps even a concession from the drug industry that is something more than a promise to run stupid and ineffective campaign ads for a stupid and ineffective corporate giveaway which the White House is trying to sell us?
This is a major poke in the eye of the Obama team and is sure to get some national attention (as Schweitzer always seems to do.) But hey, the Obama Administration deserves it.
The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were terrible on so many levels. From the first, numbing shock of seeing bodies falling from the burning towers on live television, to the wicked exploitation of the event by conservatives for political gain, the events surrounding 9/11 for me are inextricably entwined with anger and disgust.
One of the cruder side effects was a new outpouring of racism. Chatter about how terror was unique or somehow integral to Islam - and, specifically, the brown-skinned version -- lightly categorized as a horde on the brink of overrunning the United States. Happily for many righties that vision of an endangered Anglo-Saxon empire dovetailed nicely with rhetoric on immigration, then neatly transformed into the hysteria surrounding Barack Obama's birth certificate and secret, "socialist" agenda.
One of the outputs of all this talk was a call to racial profiling, kicked off by New York's resident whack job, Peter King, back in 2006:
Declaring that airport screeners shouldn't be hampered by "political correctness," House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King has endorsed requiring people of "Middle Eastern and South Asian" descent to undergo additional security checks because of their ethnicity and religion.
The Missoulian jumped right in, supporting the idea (the editorial, alas, has been scrubbed from the newspaper's digital memory):
Of course, many screening measures are intended to dance around an uncomfortable reality. The primary terrorist threat comes not from the general public. Our society's sensibilities and laws, however, don't permit us to focus on that specific subpopulation because it would seem discriminatory. Instead, we screen everybody, conduct random searches and, soon perhaps, even employ high-tech machines trying to divine their hidden intentions. The broad-brush approach makes it less likely to detect a terrorist, not more.
The problem we have is that we are unwilling as a society to acknowledge that we are at war with people who are more homogenous than the general U.S. population. Because of this, using a person's ethnic heritage as one of many factors to decide if a person should be inconvenienced a little more than the 80-year-old grandmother isn't discrimination. It is affirmative action....
But...racial profiling actually makes us less safe...
As Spencer Ackerman notes, racial profiling is "a move that would not have caught shoebomber Richard Reid (British citizen, Jamaican heritage); would-be-underpants bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab at the time (Nigerian citizen, lots of time spent in the U.K.; and now Jihad Jane (American citizen, white as the driven snow, and we know white people can't be terrorists)."
But then, racial profiling isn't about making us safer. It's about making us feel safer.
Reporters have attempted to call him "a conservative activist". Really!? I find no record of any cause he is active in (other than himself.)
Greenwood is well known in the state's political circles all right--as the guy that got caught trying to walk out the door with an illegal, secret $7,000 golden parachute from the State of Montana after his former patron Brad Johnson was voted out of office after serving only one term (h/t.) So much for responsible budgeting!
Oddly, he said he doesn't plan to give up his own campaign for legislature. Can you say "conflict of interest"? He now has free reign to raid the GOP cookie jar to help his own race.
Hilariously, his campaign theme is "Restoring Responsibility to Government."
The latest news about banking regulation legislation in the Senate:
Senator Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who is playing a crucial role in bipartisan negotiations over financial regulation, pressed to remove a provision from draft legislation that would have empowered federal authorities to crack down on payday lenders, people involved in the talks said. The industry is politically influential in his home state and a significant contributor to his campaigns, records show.
I've been following politics for a long time, and this is the first time that I can remember where Democrats held a solid and unbreakable majority in both federal legislatures and held the White House. And I have to say, it's been d*mn demoralizing. Evidence A: banking regulation.
You'd think, after watching the financial sector torpedo the American economy, good, efficient, and workable banking regulation would be a priority. And there was hope, in Chris Dodd's consumer protection agency, which would have consolidated financial regulation into one body, and which would have refocused regulation on consumer protection, something has been missing in the crazed, corporate-fueled deregulation blitz of past decades.
You'd think corporate behavior in the financial sector after the bailout - the insolent, massive payouts to its executives, the orchestrated maneuvering to place blame for the crash on blacks and the poor, the exorbitant fees and interest rates imposed on its customers - that regulation would sail through Congress. But Dodd's agency has been effectively torpedoed, regulation watered down.
And now this. Corker's reflexive protection of the most rapacious lending industries in existence. Legal loan sharking targeting those with the least financial savvy and least ability to recover from parasitic interest rates.
And in diluting or warping good legislation beyond recognition, Corker is not alone. After all it was Max Baucus himself who was the first to grab a House jobs bill as it came into the Senate, steered it into his Tax and Finance Committee, and made it contingent on "reforming" the estate tax (and preserving the odious Patriot Act). That's right - a bill to help the unemployed find work must also help the children of the mega-wealthy keep their condos in Vail.
In short, it's been demoralizing seeing this Democratic supra-majority squandered in the back rooms, gutted by "compromises" that riddle bills with so many loopholes that they end up looking like the legislative version of swiss cheese.
Yes, I know, legislation is the result of years of work. Yes, I know I should be patient. Yes, sure, some banking regulation is better than no regulation (...or is it?). But I don't see any relief, any glimmer of values from Democratic legislators.
As the saying goes, you know the true nature of a man by the company he keeps.
Randy Vogel, hired by Rehberg last month as Rehberg's top staffer (replacing former state director Dustin Frost who suffered severe head injuries following the boating accident involving Rehberg, a GOP legislator, and lots of alcohol and is leaving to "become a private consultant"), must appear in court next Tuesday where he will face allegations of poaching and obstructing a police officer, among other charges.
This is the third Republican busted for poaching in recent memory, others include Republican legislator Scott Boggio and Legislative Fiscal "analyst" Terry Johnson.
It is not yet known what effect this most recent poaching scandal will have on Rehberg's and other Republican's electoral chances this fall, but it can't be good.
It's also interesting that Rehberg didn't fire this individual, but instead allowed him to "place himself on voluntary leave."
UPDATE: Pogie at Intelligent Discontent has a great analysis of Vogel's pathetic "defense" here.
Finally, a clear reason to support Congressional health care reform:
LIMBAUGH: ...I'll just tell you this, if this passes and it's five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented - I am leaving the country. I'll go to Costa Rica.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is building a large-scale grass-roots political operation that has begun to rival those of the major political parties, funded by record-setting amounts of money raised from corporations and wealthy individuals....
The chamber's expansion into grass-roots organizing -- coupled with a large and growing fundraising apparatus that got a lift from Supreme Court rulings -- is part of a trend in which the traditional parties are losing ground to well-financed and increasingly assertive outside groups. The chamber is certainly better positioned than ever to be a major force on the issues and elections it focuses on each year, analysts think.
It figures that the Chamber of Commerce is there, hat outstretched, to catch the falling dollars from huge multinational corporations that Citzens United unloosed on our political system. Not that there's been much doubt about the CoC's mission. It's certainly not about the folksy "main street" businesses that it pretends to represent. And it's certainly not about workers or employees, taxpayers or citizens.
Besides the political system itself and your citizen, the big loser in this has got to be small businesses, as the ever-increasing payouts from big corporations dictates the policies, strategies, and efforts of chambers of commerce across the country. Run a small business, and happen to be worried about the long-term effects of climate change? F*ck you! F*ck your kids! The fossil fuel industry's shelling out big bucks for the chamber to carry its water. You don't matter.
By the way, when the CoC can organize a "grassroots" campaign, you know that word has lost its meaning.
I'm a big fan of Missoula Mayor John Engen. I lent a (very small) hand to his campaign in '05 even as I was living down in Billings. He continues to impress. He cares deeply about the health of his home town. He's smart. He listens. He's a good politician, in the best sense of that term. He focuses, constantly, almost to a fault, on making measurable progress.
But Engen more than made up for that a few weeks later when he provided a detailed outline of the [economic development] project's mission and methods, and made it clear that he is prepared to continue cracking the whip in order to get results right away.
And check out the team he's assembled to help:
St. Patrick Hospital president Jeff Fee, University of Montana executive vice president Jim Foley; Williamsworks founder and president Whitney Williams, NorthWestern Energy president Bob Rowe, First Security Bank president Scott Burke, Washington Cos. president Larry Simkins and Missoula Redevelopment Agency director Ellen Buchanan
That's a damn smart collection of folks.
My only complaint? The focus seems to be, as it is so often, on recruiting business. There are huge gains still to be made in Montana by developing homegrown businesses. Le Petit's expansion can be big local news. Big Sky's expansion has brought lots of jobs to town. Kettlehouse's growth is having a similar effect. There are interesting tech companies already based in town. Helping these folks grow is likely a surer bet for stable economic expansion than poaching industries from elsewhere.
It's not that poaching business is a terrible idea. I just think it shouldn't be job one.
Senator Roy Brown has held on to his Democratic-lean seats in the House and Senate by portraying himself as something of a moderate. His voting record belies this claim over the years. During his days in the House, for example, Roy Brown was one of 22 Representatives who supported issuing Minor in Possession citations to young women reporting sexual assaults. If there's an epitome of "punish the slut" thinking about female sexuality, that vote would have to be it.
But Roy has maintained a moderate tone over the years. This cycle, though, he's apparently spooked, because he is falling all over himself to appeal to the most reactionary elements of the Republican Party. Roy Brown actually returned the Koopman Konservative Kwestionnaire (too far?) and earned a score of 82 -- pretty much off the charts.
Let's be clear, Koopman isn't just a conservative. He's a nutjob that conservatives make pains to distance themselves from. I just heard from a friend that she saw Scott Mendenhall, no liberal himself, and two other GOPers in a Helena coffeeshop loudly mocking Roger Koopman.
Roy Brown, though? He's responding to questionnaires and bending over backwards to get a good score from Koopdog.
Brown's district is, was, and will be a lean Democratic seat. It may be the most Democratic seat currently held by a Republican in Montana. Catering to the far right isn't just bad policy here, it is terrible politics.
