by Ken Toole | Apr 4, 2025 | Legislature, Uncategorized
Guest editorial submitted by The Legislative Lurker
The Montana Legislature is made up primarily of old people. Out of 150 legislators, 113 are over age 45. Eight legislators are younger than 35 this session, which is a good thing. We need younger people’s perspectives in order to make policies that will serve the next generations.
Lukas Schubert, The 19 Year Old Legislator
We need the “olds” for practical knowledge and experience, but most sessions skew older, and so it’s nice to see younger folks stepping into the game. I just wish they wouldn’t always be, you know, stepping in it. There’s Lukas Schubert (R-Kalispell, 19 years old) , who brought at least two bills that caught my eye and made my eyebrows shoot up.
There’s HJ 22, titled “Joint resolution acknowledging that Christ is King.” That’s bad enough, considering that 45% of Montanans don’t identify as Christians, whom he calls “imposters” who should kneel before Christ, but he also brought HB 896, which is titled “Prohibit harboring or assisting illegal aliens.” The two of them together plant an image in my mind of Jesus, wearing a MAGA hat, banging his shepherd’s staff on someone’s door, saying, “You better not have any immigrants in there!”
The hearing for HJ 22 is worth a watch, especially for the part that starts about seven minutes in, with Rabbi Rep. Ed Stafman (D-Bozeman, 71 years old) quizzing the quisling on the Bible, and pointing out that bringing the name of God into the secular realm violates the Third Commandment. Schubert responded to the older man’s obviously more complete scriptural knowledge bravely, if not directly. His moral rectitude may have metastasized to hubris already. In one so young!
Representative Braxton Mitchell, Fixated with Trans
Well he’s only 19, and his brain is still developing, I guess. Boys will be boys, especially when they’re not so sure of themselves. Remember Rep. Braxton Mitchell (R-Columbia Falls, 24 years old) , who gained fame last session for a picture of him man-spreading at a drag queen? Well this session he’s been chivalrously carrying bills for his Lt. Governor, Kristen Juras, such as HB 247, titled “Eliminate damages for injuries and death arising from dueling.” That one was tabled in committee, so if he had a plan to duel, and didn’t want to have to pay damages, he’ll have to re-think it.
What’s This About Menstruation?
Mitchell and Schubert together tried to prohibit “Dispensing menstrual products in male-designated restrooms” for some boyish reason. The vote to table that one, in a Republican-dominated committee, was unanimous. I suppose if they had better role models, among the olds in the legislature, they wouldn’t have to learn the hard way.
Maybe These Young Men Need Mentors
They could have looked to Sen. Jason Ellsworth (R-Hamilton, 52 years old) for guidance, right? They’re all from the same neck of the woods – Kalispell, Columbia Falls, Hamilton – and in his long tenure, Ellsworth has demonstrated a certain deftness with creatively manipulating legislative power. Surely he could have advised them. Alas, he’s no longer a resource for the youth, as he was just barred from the Senate for life for a laundry list of infractions, including trouble with the Federal Trade Commission, abusing his power trying to weasel out of a traffic ticket, accusations of domestic abuse and, finally, indications of fraud, waste and abuse in allocating money for legislative contracts.
https://wtf406.com/2025/01/guest-post-from-john-schneeberger-in-ravalli-county/
And let’s not forget big boy Rep. Ron Marshall (R-Hamilton, 63 years old) , who might be the most honest one of them. He apparently came to the legislature in order to get advantages for his vape shop, but he couldn’t get his bills passed, so he took his toys and went home. He complained that corporate lobbyists were calling all the shots, and he’s not wrong. Still, I wonder who Marshall thinks is supporting his business by marketing addiction, if not those self-same lobbyists. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, Representative!
https://wtf406.com/2025/03/life-on-the-dark-side-of-a-flat-6000-year-old-moon/
by Guest Writer | Jul 13, 2024 | Uncategorized
By Mary Moe
It’s tempting to say nothing. With so much anger and nonsense everywhere, I keep telling myself, turn the other cheek. This, too, will pass. But eight years in, it hasn’t passed. It’s worsening. So as we celebrate the 248th birthday of our shared inheritance, a warning.
That fatal moment is upon us, Americans. If we don’t meet it calmly, rationally, and unwaveringly, the whole experiment fails.
When thousands of American citizens storm the nation’s Capitol under a president’s orchestration, at his behest, and without his interference … when they wave Confederate flags while they pummel those who defend ours … when they erect a gallows to hang the vice president and the president tweets, “He probably deserves it” … I’m plumb out of cheeks to turn — top and bottom.
But our institutions stood, right? Wrong. Every American on any side of any aisle should have risen up on Jan. 6, 2021, and every day after it to say what happened that day was inexcusable. Inexcusable. Instead, the Senate shirked its impeachment duty. And with depressingly few exceptions, Republicans — throughout this nation and throughout Montana — spent the next 3 1/2 years perpetuating the big lie and kowtowing to the Big Liar. They should know by now what virtually everyone in Trump’s White House learned the hard way: When you sell your soul to Donald Trump, there’s no buy-back clause in the contract.
But the cancer on the body politic that was the Trump presidency had metastasized. In Montana, we elected a governor who assaulted a reporter and lied about it, an attorney general now facing 41 ethical violations, a secretary of state who spent millions of taxpayer dollars in court to keep likely Democrats from voting, a state auditor who lied about his residency to get a cheaper hunting license, and a state school superintendent who … well, ‘nuff said. All in thrall to Trump.
We’ve spent the last two legislative sessions enacting a carpet-bagged agenda attacking libraries, schools, the court, local governments, and the autonomy of women and other marginalized groups while Montanans’ taxes sky-rocketed, health insurance evaporated, climate issues intensified, and housing escalated from problem to crisis.
The hate Trump legitimized is everywhere. The nonsensical theories that fuel it defy any rational discussion. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court that Trump packed — the Court the framers designed as a bulwark against partisanship — has become a political action committee.
https://missoulian.com/opinion/column/mary-sheehy-moe-donald-trump-election-2024/article_433b5a3e-37b6-11ef-b7f9-3bf02d7708cc.html
by Ken Toole | Jun 28, 2024 | Uncategorized
This image depicts an African American man joining Confederate troops marching off to war.
Almost immediately after the Civil War, the losers began a propaganda campaign to reframe and rehabilitate white supremacy. This movement, which is now referred to as the “Lost Cause,” carries on today. They claim the Civil War was not about slavery. It was a matter of “States Rights” and industrialization in northern states versus a romanticized agrarian South. Understanding the power of symbols in the public square, advocates of the Lost Cause moved to place monuments to the Confederacy in cities and towns across the country and to name public facilities like schools, parks, streets and highways after leaders of the Confederacy. All of this to support and promote the institutional racism of Jim Crow and marginalization of African Americans in society.
Most people assume these monuments were placed shortly after the Civil War, but that is not the case. The monument pictured above was placed in The National Cemetery at Arlington in 1914, almost 50 years after the war ended. According to the American Historical Association, monuments put in place during this time “were intended, in part, to obscure the terrorism required to overthrow Reconstruction, and to intimidate African Americans politically and isolate them from the mainstream of public life.” The Confederate monument which was in Women’s Park in Helena was commissioned in 1914 by the Daughters of the Confederacy. It was replaced in 2017.
In the 1950s and 1960s, there was another surge in the placement of Confederate monuments across the country in response to the civil rights movement. For example, after passage of the Civil Rights Act and The Voting Rights Act in the 1960s, 27 monuments dedicated to Confederate soldiers who had fought against “the federal enemy” were installed in Texas. Of course the Confederate battle flags we see all over Montana (most often next to Trump flags) are part and parcel of the same Lost Cause strategy to defend and protect white supremacy.
In recent years there has been a strong national movement to remove these commemorations to the Confederacy and white supremacy. The efforts to remove these symbols and change place names has become a flashpoint for controversy and, in some cases, violence, in many communities. Since 2017 and the murder of George Floyd, along with the Charleston church shooting and the Unite the Right Rally, 160 monuments across the country have been removed or torn down.
That brings us to Ryan Zinke and Matt Rosendale and their vote to reinstall this monument. The proposal failed in Congress, but the vote was a slap in the face to the African American community and advocates for equality as they were preparing to celebrate the Juneteenth holiday less than a week away. Unfortunately dog whistles and race baiting have become the order of the day among Republican politicians. And the rhetoric provided by advocates of Lost Cause propagandists that assume the mantle of historical accuracy and patriotic sentiment leaves people confused about the inherent bigotry of their phony facts and rewriting of American history. Zinke and Rosendale are finely tuned to the negative power of race baiting in the political process. Even though Rosendale is leaving public office, it should come as no surprise that he would join Ryan Zinke in jumping on this issue in an election year.
In Germany people don’t put up monuments to Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime. Is it only in America that we celebrate white supremacist losers?
by Ken Toole | Jun 22, 2024 | Uncategorized
Beautiful summer day. My 11-year-old grandson, Rhys, has been visiting for the last week. We decided to load up the kayaks and head to the pond at the Pelican Point boat launch on the Missouri. After a couple of paddles around the pond with Gramma and the dogs, we decided to head out. The place was getting crowded.
While I was loading the pickup, Gramma and Rhys decided to walk down to the launch site on the river to use the latrine before the drive home. On a sunny Friday afternoon in June, the boat launch was packed with people coming and going. Families, people fishing, folks dropping boat trailers to pick up their rafts at the end of the float. Others are putting in rafts and other watercraft to head down river. There are only three or four campsites here, and this guy was hunkered down in one of them. Rhys pointed to this truck and said, “Look at that Gramma…and look at what it says on the bottom.” Guess he wanted to make sure Gramma got the full impact of this jerk’s political message.
So, my questions are, what is this guy trying to do? Is he hoping to persuade people? Is he looking for fellow cult members? Is he hoping to start an argument with some passers by so he can exercise his Second Amendment rights? Does the Castle Doctrine apply to RVs in public campgrounds? Actually, I don’t care much. I just hope these people crawl back under the rocks they came from soon.
