On Tuesday, December 12, 2023, the Grinch revealed itself in Great Falls, Montana. I saw the mean-spirited character manifested in citizens of Cascade County.
Cascade County Commission held their bimonthly meeting at the Expo Park in anticipation of large public attendance. Commissioner Joe Brigg brought forth a resolution to remove election duties from the Clerk and Recorder. This resolution has been talked about for several years.
Public comments were heard from over one hundred people. With many more in attendance to witness the spectacle of vile and spiteful testimony. This went on for seven long and excruciating hours.
As I sat in the audience listening to the public comments, I was so ashamed of the behavior of those speaking in opposition to the resolution. These are my neighbors who used threats, yelled, and told outright lies. The Bible quotes were thrown out over and over to attack commissioners Joe Briggs and Jim Larson. Two pastors in our community spewed hateful words. Not once did I hear these so-called church attending people speak to the call to love thy neighbor as thyself. It was like watching school yard bullies and toddler temper tantrums. Never in the 62 years that I have lived in Great Falls have I ever experienced anything like the hateful actions and words that I saw that day. I fought back tears of sadness that day for my community.
The restraint shown by Commissioners Joe Briggs, Jim Larson and those that spoke in support of the resolution is to be commended. Supporters spoke with decorum and integrity while expressing their concerns for the election process that has been flawed since Clerk and Recorder Sandra Merchant has taken office. They stuck to the facts and kept religion and emotion out of their testimony.
We are in need of change in Great Falls and around Montana as this type of extremist behaviorspreads and basic community norms around public discussion and debate dissolve. Perhaps, themost disturbing aspect is the appeal to theocratic ideals which could not be more un-American.This country was founded on a fundamental separation between church and state, and we haveupheld that value, embodied in the First Amendment to the Constitution, for almost 250 years.The opponents’ dogmatic appeal to a narrow-minded, intolerant brand of Christianity would beridiculous if it were not so fundamentally dangerous and unconstitutional.
There is hard work ahead for all reasonable people of goodwill in this community and acrossMontana to try to bring us back to a semblance of decency and behavioral norms of civility andrespect necessary for the community to not only survive but thrive. “Love thy Neighbor no Exception.”
By: James C. Nelson, Montana Supreme Court Justice (Ret).
Have you ever thanked God that you never lived Nazi Germany? Well don’t get off your knees just yet; you might still find out what that was like.
Donald J. Trump is straight out of fascism’s, central casting: think Hitler (who Trump seeks to emulate and whose speeches he quotes), Bolsonaro (whose legacy and tactics he endorses), Orbán (who he endorses and who is the darling of thereactionary GOP and Fox News) and Putin (with whom Trump is bonded).
If elected, Trump intends to be America’s first dictator in the mold of the foregoing authoritarians or “strongmen.”
Trump (along with Steven Miller, and other lickspittles and sycophants) has openly proclaimed his plans for America if he’s elected President in 2024. Indeed, his formal plans have names–Project 2025 and Agenda47—and come complete with a 920-page policy book from 400+ contributors, orchestrated by the right-wing Heritage Foundation.
Specifically, here’s a summary of what Trump has in store for us:
➢ Hiring and training an army of 54,000 loyalists ready to hit the ground on inauguration day, to be appointed to government jobs and positions vacated when the civil service, administrative agencies, FBI, DOJ and intelligence agencies are purged of Trump’s enemies;
➢ Establishing concentration camps to hold aggressively rounded-up, unauthorized immigrants, pending their deportation by the “millions each year;”
➢ Placing loyal military officers over social engineering and non-defense matters including climate change, critical race theory, and manufactured extremism;
➢ Invoking the Insurrection Act, on Trump’s first day in office, and declaring martial law so as to use the military against political opponents and unrest and protests on election day;
➢ Criminally prosecuting those designated by Trump for “retribution,” and “revenge” including President Biden and his family, Democrats, and former cabinet, staff, military officers, and public officials deemed “disloyal” when he was President;
➢ Politicizing the federal civil service and undermining laws aimed at preventing corruption and cronyism;
➢ Totally controlling federal agencies that presently operate with a great deal of independence, with all reporting directly to Trump;
➢ Ending separation between the White House and the DOJ that prevents presidents from using prosecutions for political purposes;
➢ Dehumanizing political opponents, by, for example, referring to them as thugs and “vermin;”
➢ Gutting the Justice system and firing career prosecutors;
➢ Gutting the National Security and Intelligence apparatus;
➢ Requiring local law enforcement agencies to use controversial stop and frisk practices;
➢ Banning travel to and from Muslim countries;
These plans have been openly and defiantly proclaimed by Trump. Indeed, his vitriol and promises, coming from a candidate for the highest and most powerful office in the free world, are without precedent.
Trump, who gives all the appearances of being mentally deranged and paranoid, functions on the basis of only three premises: (1) will it make me look good?; (2) will I make money doing it?; and (3) will it allow me to seek revenge and retribution on my enemies?. He has no concern for political norms or customs; he has no concern for the rule of law; and he has no concern for our Country, its citizens, its institutions, its government or its Constitution. He is a pathological liar. He promises be judge, jury and executioner; a law unto himself alone. He promises to be America’s dictator-in-chief.
In the 2024 presidential election we will have two choices: vote for democracy or vote for Trump.
If you vote for the latter, stay on your knees and practice your one-arm salute. Sieg heil!
Mary Sheehy Moe: Foxes and doggies and frogs – Oh my!
I struggle to find the apt analogy: The dog that finally catches the bus? The frog that doesn’t notice the water is boiling? The fox in the henhouse?
All of the above swirl around the drain of what’s happening to the most fundamental of our democratic rights — the right to vote. The nationwide wave of efforts to discourage voting laps even at Montana’s shores. On the pretext of securing election integrity, Republicans continually advance bills making it harder for some populations to vote — Native Americans, college students, the homebound, people who can’t get off work or find a way into town on two different days to register and then to vote.
But now we’re seeing a new twist — relentless efforts to discredit those who run our elections and replace them with election deniers. In 2022, election deniers comprised 80% of the candidates running nationwide in secretary of state races. Half won their primaries. Only 8% ultimately won the seat. Thankfully, most voters don’t want a Fox-fed fox in their most precious henhouse.
Unfortunately, there’s more. Since late 2020, 161 chief local elections officials (40%) in 11 Western states, Montana included, left their positions. The average experience levels in those 161 offices plummeted from approximately eight years to about one. With the cybersecurity, technology and legal issues surrounding elections, experience matters. As the cross-partisan political reform group Issue One cautions, inexperienced elections officers are “more prone to making small mistakes based on lack of knowledge — mistakes that, however innocuous, may be interpreted by hyper-partisans as malicious acts.”
What those 161 offices have now isn’t a fox in the henhouse, but a dog who caught the bus. This inexperience feeds the very narrative election deniers were yipping between howled lies before the newbies were elected. You need look no farther than Great Falls, to see how alarmingly this dog don’t hunt. Since being elected clerk and recorder in 2022, the election denier there has fouled up election after election.
In May, flood and irrigation district elections were so riddled with errors that both districts have turned to the courts for resolution.
The school board election was even worse — contradictory ballot instructions, misfolded ballots hampering ballot-counting, some voters receiving two ballots, others getting none, voters who work unable to vote because the polling place opened late, signature verification hindered by the fact that ballots were separated from envelopes … in short, so many gaffes that the court appointed an election monitor to oversee the next election.
Enter June’s library levy election: miscommunication on election dates, instructions so erroneous they had to be reprinted three times, multiple ballots to the same voter; no ballots for some voters … same-new, same-new.
And in the municipal elections last week, the nightmare continued. In addition to the now-usual dysfunction, inadequate prior notice had voters reporting to the usual polling place (the fairgrounds), where they were directed to the elections office, a small space on a busy downtown street with parking at a premium. Already disgruntled, voters plugged meters and queued up to enter a room whose very décor screamed partiality.
An enlarged Corinthians quote and a big ceramic elephant dominated the counter space. The walls were filled with pithy, pick-a-fight quotations incongruously placed next to more charitable tokens. My favorite: A large wooden cross adjacent to an even larger picture of a longhorn emblazoned with the words, “Do No Harm. But Take No Bull.” Jesus would be so pleased.
These are relatively small-potatoes local elections with low voter turnout. But 2024 is just around the corner. What’s that, Kermit? Water too warm?
Find the original article here: https://helenair.com/opinion/column/mary-sheehy-moe-foxes-and-doggies-and-frogs-oh-my/article_cd5c55f6-83d9-11ee-a5d6-43e02c899978.html
Local news has been hard to come by since the Great Falls Tribune suffered a drastic reduction in force. So, we’ll be highlighting state and local journalists who are working hard to cover Montana happenings. Today’s selection is a piece from The Daily Montanan. The same White Christian Nationalism that dominated the 2023 Legislative Session has also shaped Great Falls’ politics for the past two election cycles. Read about this dangerous movement here:
By now we all know that Republican House Speaker Matt Reiger is putting Montana on the map by silencing Democratic Representative Zooey Zephyr for her plea to vote no on SB 99 on the House floor last week.
Let’s talk about SB 99 , the bill with a short title called, “Provide for a youth health protection act,” which I find rather ironic. Did the bill’s sponsor, Senator John Fuller, intentionally give this bill a name that does not correlate to its identity?
This bill does not protect transgender youth, but instead prohibits gender affirming care by medical professionals who treat minors for gender dysphoria by criminalizing health care professionals and prohibiting professional liability via insurance. Can you see the physicians leaving the state yet?
For a lot of reasons, I do not support this bill, but, most significantly, because I have a transgender nephew. It was a very painful process for my entire family, especially my nephew, to go through this transition. It wasn’t painful because my nephew was confused, it was painful in terms that we all had to learn a new way— new terms, a new person, a new appearance. We had to learn a new way to love and support my nephew, who fortunately, was given a gender-neutral name at birth, so that was one constant. It wasn’t as simple as checking a box, or waking up one morning and deciding that he was a boy. It was a process riddled with mistakes, despite lots of healthcare professional support.
I know my family’s experience was easy compared to what many other Montana families experience. My nephew grew up in San Diego where my brother lives, so, as you can imagine, the access to exceptional medical care that comes with a metropolitan city was readily available. The medical community was well prepared to walk us through the transition and provide family resources. And, my brother has excellent health insurance. Many transgender Montanans do not have decent insurance–especially with legislation aimed at erasing them. We were fortunate.
In our case, we made it a priority to hold an open-mind and go through this as an accepting and loving family—even when it seemed sort of crazy. Yes, it is weird to change pronouns. I remember asking my sister-in-law, “so now I can’t say niece, what do I say?” She effortlessly said, “Just say my brother’s oldest kid, leave the gender out.” That was before we learned the term “nibling.”
The awkwardness lasts a very short time and the new normal takes over, and you don’t even notice anymore. It just takes effort and, let me tell you, we fumbled and fucked up, but we were able to laugh at ourselves and be honest. I believe it has brought our family closer together because this experience showed us what is truly important—life, love, and the unconditional support of one another. The right to live and let live.
The Republican legislators in this body do not care how many lives are at stake by passing this bill. Not even a heartbreaking letter from an ER physician was enough to convince our Christian Montana governor to reconsider his deplorable position. The letter details the sad case of one Montana trans youth brought in after a failed suicide attempt, and who attributed their hopelessness to “my state doesn’t want me.”
My nephew was required to go through YEARS of therapy (with a licensed physician specializing in gender affirming care) and, only when it was determined that my nephew would absolutely benefit from different therapeutic interventions, were options offered. It wasn’t simply a primary care doctor and some prescriptions handed out. It was methodical, yet fluid, and the plan changed as new things developed. Only years after THAT was my nephew able to have “top surgery” – another term we had to learn, to have his breasts removed.
Gratefully, my nephew is now engaged to his life partner, and doing all the normal things that couples do. He has a job he loves and is living a full life in a community and family that honors and respects his life.
Transgender, nonbinary, and gender diversity is not something that citizens should meddle into, much less lawmakers. It should be left to the individuals, families, and medical professionals going through this experience. It has been painful, and provocative, to listen to some of the legislators testify so brazenly about a very sensitive, serious, personal issue. If the Governor, the Freedom Caucus, and the state Republicans (Glimm, Gist, Galloway, Sheldon-Galloway, Emrich, and McKamey) truly want to protect trans youth and LGBTQ+ kids as they claim, then they should take action to support Gender Health programs in the state. They could introduce legislation to study the needs of the LGBTQ+ and trans people, they could invite and encourage trained, compassionate physicians, social workers, mental health professionals and others to increase access for this specific group of individuals who deserve quality healthcare like ALL MONTANANS. Full-spectrum healthcare is not asking for too much!
Last Friday SB 99 was transmitted to Governor Gianforte to be signed into law, and, if signed, we can no longer refer to ourselves as the Last Best Place.
