Rep. Art Noonan of Butte is returning to the Montana House, although under unfortunate circumstances. Speaker-elect Bergren just announced that Art Noonan has been selected to fill the seat of George Groesbeck.
I know Art only slightly better than I knew George, but his choice is a very solid one. Art is a very smart and considerate man, someone who understands policy and its impact on people, and who brings a keen political mind without the sometimes too-negative baggage it can entail.
Chuck Johnson has a story this morning on the oddness of Democrats winning the land board unanimously while losing control of the legislature.
The explanation offered in the article -- that leg race outcomes don't correlate with upticket support or statewide candidates -- is a pretty incomplete argument. It is offered both by our Governor and by a poli sci professor from UM. Bottom line, they say that because of the small size of Montana's House districts1, voters make their decisions differently.
Looking at the data, though, this is a stretch. Down-ballot voting closely tracks up-ballot voting in every county I've looked at so far. Dem performance typically runs a few points ahead of Obama's performance. I'm not looking at Baucus's or Schweitzer's numbers (or Rehberg's for that matter), because those races were just in their own categories this year. Now, this isn't because Steve Bullock convinced people to vote for their local Democrat. It is because most people vote a straight ticket or something very close to a straight ticket, breaking only very infrequently (and my early analysis suggests split ticket voting declined this year).
Also worth noting for a variety of reasons: Democrats won the popular vote statewide in House races. The count is 228,888 to 219,490, with a hair over 4,000 scattered to third party, independent, and write-in candidates.
Note that this means that Dems in the legislature outperformed Linda McCulloch's statewide numbers (but also pretty solidly underperformed the rest of the Dem Tier B candidates).
Now, this doesn't mean that Democrats win the Montana House. Legislative races are the World Series, not the Super Bowl. You don't just have to get the votes -- you also have to get them in the right places.
Perhaps ironically, the more local races get, the less information voters are using to make their decisions and the more likely they appear to be to revert to partisan inclinations. That appears to be an especially strong impulse this year.
1 Note, though that Montana's house districts aren't the smallest in the nation. That prize belongs to NH, where its 400 House members each represent roughly 3,000 people apiece.
Here's an interesting letter: Rep. Krayton Kerns takes up the names of Roger Koopman and John Sinrud and compares them to Vietnam Veterans who got unfairly picked on.
For those keeping score at home, this is the second insane comparison between John Sinrud's woes and those of men and women serving our country in warzones.
Beyond that, the letter is simply inane, including quotes like this, "Politics is truly a blood sport."
No. It's not Mr. Kerns. Neither Roger Koopman nor John Sinrud got shot at in the line of duty.
Honestly, Martyrs appear to be a dime a dozen in the GOP House ranks.
So conservatives who, by their own admission don't know Steve Doherty, are saying he's going to be a bad candidate because he is tied to an organization that is advocating all sorts of stuff, like, you know, a higher minimum wage, expanded access to health care, affordable housing, paid sick leave, and an expansion in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Truly -- those are such wacky ideas that all of them poll off the charts.
I can't wait 'til they lob those accusations.
It's become clear that they're digging, though. The MT GOP E-Brief yesterday attacked Jon Tester with the headline "Tester would support anti-gun Bloomberg in '08: Spokesman says Tester leans toward Gun Ban Mike for Prez." Thinking this odd, I looked for the quote where Democrat Jon Tester was leaning toward anti-gun Republican Mike Bloomberg and I found this story, which reads:
And yet, despite the backing the mayor enjoys in almost every sector, there is one major problem. Bloomberg has yet to commit to running and could enter the 08 race too late to pick up any meaningful support. The Huffington Post reached out to several Senators who have not, at this point in time, endorsed a candidate. When asked if they would endorse Bloomberg should he choose to run, some gave curious responses but the majority said: likely not.
"Sen. Tester hasn't endorsed a candidate yet," said Matt McKenna, spokesman for Sen, Jon Tester, D-MT. "If Bloomberg gets it, give me a call. Until then, I'd hate to speculate."
Cody Wertz, a spokesperson for Sen. Ken Salazar, D-CO, added: "Senator Salazar has not endorsed any candidate yet. Senator Salazar is a Democrat."
Spokespersons for Sen. Jim Webb, D-VA, and Claire McCaskill, D-MO, released similar statements.
Crazy. Matt McKenna gets asked a question about who Jon is supporting for President and doesn't know, so he says he doesn't want "to speculate." Not speculating now means endorsing anti-gun Republican Michael Bloomberg.
It's one thing to pick nits. It's another thing to flat out lie.
Update -- Actually, let me take this a step further. It's a good thing that Matt McKenna didn't turn this into a priority and waste his own time and that of our Senator's to discuss some New York/D.C. insider story that no one else cares about. If Chris Wilcox thinks this is how our taxpayer dollars should be spent, good for him.
Well, the Left in the West voters spoke -- and Steve Doherty appears to be the favored choice for the race against Dennis Rehberg for the U.S. House.
Steve's name has surfaced for the race repeatedly. It's not shocking. He's got the energy and know-how to run a real race. He's got connections in the base county of Missoula and the increasingly swing county of Cascade. He's got street cred on reservations and with the hook and bullet crowd.
So will it be a competitive race? Who knows. But if anyone can make it in to one, I'd guess Steve Doherty can.
So I've been following this tax dispute a bit from the outside and scratching my head for a few reasons:
Why are the Republicans attacking the Governor for cutting taxes?
What exactly is the legislative staff accusing the Governor's office of doing improperly?
Are legislative auditors treating Governor Schweitzer differently than they treated other (Republican) Governors?
What is going to happen here long term?
And the answer to all of these is, um, I don't know.
Just to be clear, because there have been questions -- I didn't write or even promote really anything to do with this dispute other than a political cartoon that I could make heads and tails of.
Still, I've had some enlightening conversation lately -- and I wanted to throw out my take on what is happening here:
The Governor's office opted for a tax cut friendly intepretation of language in Rep. Sonju's bill. What was the motive? Who knows -- maybe they decided to read the bill in a similar way to other triggers; perhaps they thought cutting taxes more would be the path of least resistance; maybe they substantively prefer the bigger tax cut.
Something about this interpretation, which is apparently similar to the way the trigger for school spending is hit, is at odds with how LFD perceives standard accounting principles. I have yet to grasp exactly what the complaint is here.
Looking for something to make hay out of, Republicans grabbed on an audit and have pushed it into newspapers. Unfortunately for them, they picked a complicated issue where substantively their position -- smaller tax cuts -- is at odds with their standard rhetoric.
Some people are now claiming that the fiscal division is in cahoots the state GOP to orchestrate this whole thing.
I'm less inclined to run in pulling fingers. My guess is that the Schweitzer Administration thought moving for more tax cuts was a good idea, with large expected revenues for the biennium. My guess is that the Legislative Fiscal Division's criticism, even if misplaced, is well-intentioned.
My other thought is that the Republican Party could look a lot better through this whole thing if they were explaining what the problem is in a way that was even mildly understandable.
Even reading the original LFD memo, it seems to me that the complaint is two-fold: that the Department of Administration sent a corrected number to the Budget Director instead of the number crunched right when the books closed (wouldn't a corrected number be better) and the second complaint that the Schweitzer Administration used a number that includes "transfers, proceeds of fixed asset disposition, and inception of lease amounts." Now, that's all fascinating, but I don't really know what it means.
Well, Sinrud played his game, even asking recently during an Audit Committee hearing, "Where is it that we have to protect those structures? Why not just let them burn?" Now, I'm sure this was nothing more than an attempt to flesh out first principles using the always popular Socratic method, but it does beg some awfully good questions, including "Where is that we have to enforce laws? Why not just let them be broken?" and "Where is it that we need to prevent violence? Why not just let people be assaulted?" Oh, wait, I already forgot, beating up on people is free speech in Sinrud bizarro universe.
Now, hilariously, Republicans have been attacking the Governor for vetoing a tax credit for firefighters, even as their own party's leadership gutted a proposal to fund those firefighters' paychecks. Given how expensive this firefighting season was, it'll probably require a second special session, meaning that Montana Republicans just may hold the dubious honor of turning 2007 into the first year in Montana history that the legislature had to convene three times because they kept f***ing up (someone may want to look into that, 'cause I think there's got to be a special place in history for Sales, Lange, and Sinrud, the men to whom we owe our gratitude for this situation).
Anyways, let's just keep in mind that Sinrud's response to big fire costs was to Monday Morning QB and suggest that the state should have just let the fires burn down people's houses.
All of this, of course, comes about a year after their last banner carrier, Conrad Burns, called firefighters lazy (hmm, maybe they already are letting these structures burn, they're just getting paid for it).
And the big Republican solution? Whine about tax cuts.
Rep. Mike Lange was just knocked out of leadership. Ostensibly this was done because of his outburst on YouTube, but the timing seems off for that to be the reason. Might this have more to do with the fact that Mike Lange had a hell of a tongue, but also ultimately cut a deal with the Gov.? This looks like the Republicans trying to punish moderation again to me. This strange 'graf in the story sums it up:
But others said the profanity-laced tirade from Lange was too much to overcome. It was obvious in recent weeks that House Speaker Scott Sales was not on the same page with Lange.
A lot of these same legislators defended the "profanity-laced tirade." The second sentence of the paragraph is a completely different reason for making the move. I'd like to see the roll call for that particular vote.
Mark Simonich left the Secretary of State's office in a hurry. I've heard a lot of chatter from folks wondering what the story is here. For the record, I have no clue. Off the record, I have no clue. But a resignation effective the day it was made in order to "pursue other opportunities" is downright strange. We'll see what happens here.
Ed Kemmick and David Sirota having a back-and-forth on the session.
Ed is ultimately calling for a truce in the war of words. I respond in his comments, but some of it is worth highlighting:
Meanwhile, Democratic leadership in the legislature is working to get a sit-down meeting in Billings with Republican leadership to hammer out some details - and if the Dems and the GOP in the leg can work out a deal, the Governor will basically have to come along for the ride. But the Dems aren't even sure that House GOP leadership, consisting of the Sideshow and the Madman, will bother to come.
Anyways, it's pretty important to remember when the war of words started, since people seem to think that it was started by the all-powerful liberal bloggers. It wasn't. It was Sales and Lange who from day one insisted that their job was to obstruct, to declare war, and to break their own campaign promises as need be.
The difference between liberal bloggers and the mainstream press was that most of us liberal bloggers had the audacity to take the Speaker at his word. He's following through on those promises now. We still seem to be the only ones noticing.
Now, there's a fair response to this -- that pointing fingers doesn't help anyone. And I'd agree, if Sales and Lange were actually interested in coming to the table and working with Democratic leadership.
But it just doesn't make any sense now to pretend that Sales and Lange are being anything close to responsible. They keep demanding things of other people without asking anything of themselves.
I think Ed knows this, too. He and I have pretty different perspectives, but a fairly recurring theme on his site is the need for responsibility. Republican leadership in the House pretty clearly still needs to learn what that means.
And they need to stop simply demanding that other people clean up their messes for them.
Who's fault is this at the end of the day? Who do we have to blame for the fact that there is no budget resolution? From what I can tell, there are a few arguments, let's evaluate 'em.
Update -- By the way, Republicans, you might want to check out the folks who should be your base. They think you're now trying to intentionally lose the next election. That's a bad sign.
Twomore must-reads. The Senate has adjourned for good, leaving the House the option of embracing the last Senate-adopted budget or adjourning and forcing a special session.
Republicans are decrying this, even though it is precisely the strategy they were thinking about launching.
This is just insanity. I'm not even really sure what I think of the Senate Democrats' move. To be sure, their hand was forced. When it becomes absolutely clear that the other side won't deal in good faith, it becomes damn difficult to keep trying.
Bottom line: A special session is basically inevitable. The Republicans just keep saying no one will negotiate with them. I don't buy it. They keep getting offers and then saying no one will compromise. Here's an idea, Mr. Confuse Negotiations With Bribery and the rest of your party: make a damn counter-offer. Start acting like adults. Stop crying. Stop cussing. Start working.
Update -- The session is over. There is no budget.
After watching Representatives bicker over procedural matters in the House Appropriations Committee, Sen. John Cobb, R-Augusta, told reporters he was disgusted with House Republican leadership and compared them to third-world dictators.
"You gotta a couple of thugs that are just taking it over," said Cobb, a moderate Republican who often votes with Democrats.
Thanks for the sanity, Senator. This session is a giant black eye on the state.
At the caucus, Lange said Schweitzer asked him at an early morning meeting if he would vote for House Bill 833, a 14-bill Democratic omnibus tax relief and loophole-closing package, in exchange for Democrats supporting a version of Lange's House Bill 678, a school funding and property tax relief plan.
Such horse-trading over bills is commonplace during the closing days of any Legislature.
"The governor can go straight to hell as far as I'm concerned for trying to do that," Lange told his caucus.
Lange went on to say, "I'm pissed off at that SOB on the second floor (Schweitzer) that thinks he's trying to run the state like a dictator. What matters is your integrity.
"So my message to the governor is: Stick it up your ass! Stick it up your ass!"
Many of the House Republicans applauded at those words.
[...]
"I don't give a shit," he told his caucus. "I will not be offered a bribe to turn you loose to screw the people of the state of Montana. We won't back down."
He said it may be a "lost cause" to find a solution before Friday's final day, which would lead to a special session.
As the House Republican caucus ended, members began chanting, "Stay till May! Stay till May!"
Jeebus.
Later, some House Republicans tried to play down Lange's angry comments. They told reporters it was like a coach getting himself thrown out of a game as a tactic to inspire his players.
Sweet. Does that mean we can throw Mike Lange out now?
I mean, let's be clear here -- the Governor asked if Lange would give the all-clear for a Dem bill in exchange for the all-clear on a GOP bill. That's horse-trading, negotiations, compromise. Call it whatever the Hell you want. It's not bribery. Bribery would be the Governor saying, "Hey, Mikey, we'll give you $10 and some gummy bears if you just go back and pass our agenda."
It's really not shocking to find out that this guy doesn't grasp the English language or ethics. That's been damn clear from early on. What's startling is that his team is rallying behind him.
Update -- It's a bad sign when the voices of sanity in the GOP are a couple guys from the Flathead. Kudos to Sen. Brueggeman and Rep. Jones for stating the obvious though: Mike Lange didn't just cross the line today. He ran past it, screaming profanities the whole time.
Update II - by V
For those of you who wanted to see the insanity first hand, we have video:
The Governor signed a bill opting out of REAL ID today -- meaning Montana is not going to be part of the de facto national ID system. The bill passed unanimously.
Jon Tester is already on it -- calling on the U.S. Senate to listen to the people of Montana. Similar bills are moving elsewhere in the country.
More as real news stories are up.
Update - AP story is up. Montana is joining Arkansas and Idaho. Maine, Washington, and Hawaii are also being pains in the feds' asses on this one. That's a nice red/blue coalition, I think.
The Montana legislature is hammering out a deal on taxes. Here's the basics. Over the biennium, a $1 billion surplus is predicted. We're looking at $150 million in permanent tax cuts.
The cost of expanding the Children's Health Insurance Program in the way the Senate approved costs a whopping $600,000 each year for the next two years.
Relatively speaking, it's tiny. It's also health care for children, which really is an investment (just the same as early maintenance work on a car is an investment).
There's a lot of arguments against insuring children. None of them are very strong. We all end up picking up the tab for uninsured children who end up in the emergency room. Children who don't get regular check-ups are likely to be less healthy as adults, meaning they're more likely to be uninsured emergency room visitors as adults. And while it's nice to play the personal responsibility card, it's ridiculous to think a 5-year-old should be responsible for her or his own health insurance.
This battle is in the House now. Hopefully we can put an end to this and raise the eligibility levels for CHIP.
The Independent Record ran one of their unscientific polls looking for community feelings on Election Day Registration. Their results are telling. Here's a couple comments they highlight arguing against preserving EDR:
We live in a convenience loving society, but serious responsibilities usually are not so very convenient.
[...]
Voting is a privilege that should not be taken lightly.
Except that it's not. While I'd agree that voting should not be taken lightly, it is neither a privilege nor a responsibility. In Montana, it is very clearly a right. From our state Constitution:
Section 13. Right of suffrage. All elections shall be free and open, and no power, civil or military, shall at any time interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage.
Now, I also think free speech should be used "responsibly" and that our freedom of the press, to bear arms, and to assemble should "not be taken lightly."
But I'll be damned if I'm too keen on a drive to crack down on "irresponsible" speech. Similarly, an effort to crack down on "irresponsible" voting should send off red flags. The premise of democratic systems (yes, including republics and representative democracies) is that the all the people are wiser than any of the individual people. Thinking that we know which of the people to exclude to reach wiser decisions is a violation of that principle and a very, very special form of arrogance.
There is a justifiable argument for placing constraints on the right to vote for reasons that actually protect that right -- including requiring registration to prevent fraud. The big problem here, though, is that voter fraud in the modern U.S. is a chimera. It's a very politically useful one for people who oppose the right to vote, but it's mythical all the same.
The Montana legislature is considering a bill to partially gut the minimum wage initiative we voters overwhelmingly passed last fall (at some point, you'd think politicians would realize that they probably don't have much grounds for self-confidence if they hold such strong doubts about the opinions of their constituents).
The bill would establish a tip penalty, lowering the wages for restaurant workers who receive tips. That means that when you're tipping, all you're doing is increasing the profit of the restaurant owner, not really rewarding good service (huzzah!).
The Brennan Center, one of the nation's premier non-partisan legal think tanks, has analyzed this legislation and found it to be deeply problematic.
The way that Republicans (and, unfortunately, some Democrats) have been talking on this bill, you'd think restaurant servers were fat cats living on large estates and driving Maseratis. The reality is way different.
Even with the $6.15 an hour minimum wage, typical compensation (including tips) for the 8,600 servers in Montana comes out to a whopping $7.32 an hour -- enough to make well under the poverty line while working full-time. No doubt, servers at high-end restaurants make more money, but these servers are an exception, not a rule. High end restaurants are also (hopefully) more profitable for their owners. If they're not, the owners should stop bitching and find themselves a line of work at which they are competent.
Even worse, the Brennan Center's legal analysis finds that the House Bill in question would have much more far-reaching implications for wages than the business community implies.
Luckily, the Senate has tabled this bill, but it will no doubt be brought up again in the future. That's because, for some folks, you can never do enough to relieve the mild economic hardships of multi-national oil companies and out-of-state wealthy landowners, and you can never do to much to squeeze low-wage workers on principle.
