by Ken Toole | Aug 25, 2024 | Elections
Rea Grulkowski announced her intention to file as a write-in candidate for Cascade County Commission at The Pachyderm Club meeting held on August 22. Back in June she lost her Republican primary race to Eric Hinebaugh by a wide margin. It seems she is unwilling to accept the primary results. Instead she is opting for organizing a write-in campaign for a seat on the County Commission.
No one should be surprised Grulkowski won’t accept the fact that she lost an election. She is a core activist in the local election denier crowd. She was also the major driver in the controversy which engulfed the Clerk and Recorder’s office after election denier Sandra Merchant took over in the last election. Ultimately, the full County Commission removed the election duties from Merchant’s control over the strenuous and often unethical objections raised by Grulkowski.
As of Friday, August 23, she had not filed a declaration of intent to be a write-in candidate with the Election Office as required by state law. She has until 5:00 September 3rd.
Write-in campaigns are rarely successful. They require strong organization and an aggressive education campaign. Most serious write-in campaigns have stickers printed to make sure the candidate’s name is spelled correctly on the ballot. With a name like Rea Grulkowski supporters who want to vote for her could easily misspell her name and have their vote thrown out.
The Secretary of State’s office has a rule on the use of stickers for write-ins. It advises candidates to consult with their local election administrator to assure the stickers can be used in the equipment local election offices use.
See Jasmine Taylor’s Tik Tok on this topic.
https://www.tiktok.com/@montana_jasmine/video/7406314192745319726?lang=en&q=jasmine%20taylor&t=1724452544645
by Helena Lovick | Aug 23, 2024 | Abortions Rights, Elections
My eyes about rolled into another dimension when I got the mailer about Jerry Lynch’s and Katherine Bidegaray’s dangerous liberal agenda. Right. If anything, that’s an endorsement based on the dark money groups that fund that nonsense. As noted by an editorial in the Daily Inter Lake, “Montanans for Fair Taxes is funded by out-of-state pharmaceutical companies, tobacco companies, uber-wealthy political extremists and Montana Chamber money. The same is true for another shady group hypocritically called Montanans for Judicial Accountability.”
But I’m sure they have everyday Montanans best interests at heart. (Great, now my eyes hurt from rolling so much).
Several of the current problems with the “Supreme” Court of the United States (SCOTUS) are due to the lifetime appointments of the justices with no real oversight. In Montana, we vote on our State Supreme Court justices which allows our court to be filled with judges accountable to the people. And that’s why dark money groups are so invested in putting their preferred picks on the court.
Why should we care about the makeup of Montana’s Supreme Court?
Welp, do you want reproductive freedom?
Nightmarish stories of American women suffering through a miscarriage and being turned away from emergency rooms have filled the news. Thankfully our State Supreme Court is currently holding back unconstitutional bans of abortion in Montana. Because of Montana’s robust State Constitution and right to privacy, abortion rights continue to be protected in Montana.
Yes! Abortion is still legal in Montana.
Let’s hang strong and keep abortion legal Montana!
Image from NYT
Because Montana continues to offer abortion services, residents of surrounding states have been traveling to our state for necessary healthcare. For example, the number of Idahoans traveling to Montana to receive abortion care has tripled in the last year. Of course, we can’t get complacent and ignore justice elections for our State Supreme Court. We know that established law can be thrown out by partisan judges with a personal agenda. Take a look at the SCOTUS with their bullshit decisions on a range of issues including Roe v. Wade.
Impartial Judges for the Win
Since I want a Montana Supreme Court that continues to function with impartial justices who adhere to the constitution, I will be voting for Jerry Lynch and Katherine Bidegaray. The fact that dark money groups have negative ads against them is just another sign that these two judges will actually be the impartial justices we need to protect our rights.
by Ken Toole | Aug 18, 2024 | Abortions Rights
The Montana Department of Health and Human Services is in the process of adopting new rules to regulate clinics that offer abortion services. The Department has issued a draft for public comment.
In issuing the proposed rules the department said, “In the department’s judgment, these current regulatory requirements represent the appropriate level of regulatory requirements to impose on abortion clinics.” An online hearing has already been held. Read the proposed rules here:
https://dphhs.mt.gov/assets/rules/37-1052pro-arm.pdf
The rules impose restrictions on clinics offering abortion services in virtually all areas of operations from staffing to lighting to the size of hallways. The rules are being proposed after a district court found legislation passed by the last legislature to provide the same kind of regulation to be too vague.
At the hearing the proponents of the new rules were the usual anti-abortion activists and organizations. Opponents of the rules were predominantly local clinics who provide abortion services. The opponents argued that the rules are intended to make it more difficult to operate and that the intent of the rules is to force them to close.
Please Submit Comment
The deadline is August 23. Comments can be submitted to this email address. [email protected]. More information
Health department holds hearing on abortion licensure rules
by Ken Toole | Aug 16, 2024 | Elections
According to media reports, anti-Semitic memes have been circulated in Montana communities once again. This time it appears that Tim Sheehy’s campaign circulated a meme featuring a darkened photo of Chuck Schumer (who is Jewish) superimposed over a puppet master’s hands manipulating radio, TV and a bag of money.
In May, several national news outlets covering the Schumer meme reported that the Sheehy campaign also employed a 21-year-old man named Caleb Oriet. Oriet has a history of placing bigoted posts on social media. The Daily Beast reported it this way, “The account belonging to the 21-year-old Montanan and self-proclaimed ‘Anglo-Saxon Protestant’ and ‘menace to society’ liked, for instance, a tweet that refers to Black Americans as ‘the most criminal, dependent, and socially destructive part of the population,’ and attacks GOP efforts to connect with Black voters.”
Oriet previously worked for Republican eastern district Congressman Matt Rosendale and gave speeches promoting Christian Nationalism. In 2022 Oriet was the director of a far right organization called The American Populist Union. In an interview with Great Falls Tribune he said, “You look at today’s population, 20.5% of Gen-Z says they’re gay. The political implications of this are disastrous. As people my age start taking power it’s just not going to be a good thing. Our main goal is the replacement of this very elitist American establishment with one that is willing to put America, her citizens and interests over that of foreign interests or international finance.”
The Sheehy campaign refused to respond to requests for information about the incident, instead going on the attack. The campaign said that the Daily Beast was a “trash New York tabloid,” and accused it of “tearing down a 21 year old man.” But after the article appeared, most of Oriet’s social media accounts were closed and his name no longer appeared on the campaign’s website. The Sheehy campaign continues to refuse to respond to questions about his employment status with the campaign.
Gallatin Republican Central Committee
In the middle of June, the Gallatin County Republican Central Committee circulated a similar meme featuring financier George Soros (who is also Jewish) controlling Obama, Biden and Harris. The meme featured a caption saying, “Our situation explained.” Both of these are tropes for anti-Semites promoting conspiracy theories that Jews control the media, banking industry and politics.
Perhaps more troubling is the fact that neither Sheehy’s campaign nor the Republican Central Committee have responded to leaders in the Montana Jewish community when they expressed concern about use of these memes. Nor did either respond to requests for interviews with the media.
Sheehy Has Plenty Of Company In The Republican Party
In the last legislative session, Gallatin County Democratic Legislator Ed Staffman, who is also a Rabbi, was scheduled to give the daily invocation in the Montana House of Representatives. At the last minute, he was informed that his invocation was being canceled by Republican Speaker of the House Matt Regier. Staffman said that he felt he was being shut down because he was not offering a Christian prayer. Another leader in the Jewish community said “The legislature is very single-minded right now. It’s focused on a white, male, Christian agenda.” https://wtf406.com/2023/12/the-oldest-hatred-antisemitism-visits-the-montana-legislature/
Just prior to the last legislative session, Cascade County Senator Jeremy Trebas retweeted a meme about Jewish people conducting child sacrifice. After being confronted about his tweet, Trebas took it down but refused to apologize. https://wtf406.com/2023/12/trebas-fails-to-apologize-for-anti-semitic-tweet/
There is a lot to be concerned about in all of these incidents. First, one has to wonder what kinds of things are being said about Jewish people outside the public eye and what are the beliefs of the officials who apparently tolerate and even defend these actions. The refusal of the officials in these incidents to respond to the leaders of the Jewish community who are rightfully concerned about anti-Semitism in our state and the impact it has on our Jewish citizens. Finally, ignoring inquiries from the media has become the campaign strategy of far too many politicians in our state. A functioning democracy requires an informed citizenry and denying access to public officials is fundamentally anti-democratic.
For more on this https://dailymontanan.com/2024/08/07/jewish-leaders-in-montana-concerned-about-sheehy-gallatin-co-republicans-posting
by Guest Writer | Aug 13, 2024 | Guest Articles
By Jim Edwards
We’re past the time to “debate” climate change, it’s real – and it’s a problem. We need Congress focused on bi-partisan solutions for addressing it.
We need to be solving it so we can live in a stable climate and not enduring the climate-driven extreme weather events – wildfires, droughts, heatwaves, and the resulting low flows and warming water temps in our rivers and reservoirs. 2023 was the hottest year since records have been kept and 2024 is likely to beat it. Besides rising global temperatures, we’re seeing all sorts of other negative impacts, like more frequent and extreme droughts, floods, and severe, dangerous storms.
However, since the “debate” seems to keep cropping up, I’d like to remind my fellow Montanans that there is overwhelming consensus within the scientific community on these fundamental points regarding human-induced climate change:
- Earth’s global average temperature is increasing;
- Due to our burning of fossil fuels, human emissions of greenhouse gasses, especially carbon dioxide (CO2), are the main cause of the warming;
- International, independently derived research results ALL pointing towards the same finding provide a high degree of confidence that climate scientists are on the right track. The scientific community continues to add new findings and knows that many details about climate interactions aren’t fully understood and require significant, additional, continued research.
Climate defines the range in temperature and precipitation patterns making up our weather. Since the 1800s, the climate has warmed. Since World War II, the dominant contributor has been the burning of fossil fuels—coal, oil and natural gas. All contain carbon. When burned, they emit potent gases, mostly CO2, into the atmosphere. These emissions act like a down blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and thus raising temperatures, and creating droughts. As more water evaporates into the atmosphere, it provides fuel for storms and more intense rainfall.
Nearly 100 percent of climate scientists are now convinced, based on the evidence, that human-caused global warming is happening. Still, the general public perceives there is significant “debate” among scientists – why?
A campaign of obfuscation regarding climate change science has been underway since the late 1980s, funded in large part by the fossil fuels industry (quite similar to what the tobacco industry did 30 years earlier regarding the correlation of tobacco use and cancer prevalence).
In the early 1990s, the Western Fuels Association (with funding from Exxon and others), conducted a massive PR campaign to “reposition global warming as a theory (not fact)”, using dissenting scientists (industry funded), to create the impression of ongoing scientific debate.
My brother spent 40 years as an engineer working in the coal side of ExxonMobil (Exxon is now 100% divested of its coal portfolio). He’s helped educate me to the fact that for the first 30 years of his career, Exxon was invested in climate change denial; within the past 15 years, Exxon has pivoted and is now fully on board with the Paris Climate Agreement.
Scientists do not disagree about whether climate change is human-caused. There are only a very few, and even fewer with scientific backgrounds relevant to climate science, who promote “debate”. Many individuals who pose as “experts” in media sources are not scientists at all, or else have no real background in actual climate science.
People from all walks of life and all political stripes care about climate change and want to see the problem fixed as soon as possible.
To leave a healthy, stable world for future generations, we need to act now, get creative, and work energetically together. For solutions, please see https://citizensclimatelobby.org/
Jim Edwards
Member of the Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL)
Jim founded Mountain West Benefits (MWB) consultancy in 2003. MWB provided health insurance advisory services and was Montana’s largest benefit consultancy firm, advising large employer, association and union sponsored plans covering over 35,000 individuals.
In 2012 Jim and his partner, Richard Miltenberger, founded the Montana Health Co-op (now Mountain Health Co-op). Jim sold MWB to the Leavitt Group in 2015 and retired in 2017. Jim and his wife Sheila have four ordinary adult children and three brilliant grandchildren.
