As a general rule, when you have to introduce your argument with “believe it or not,” it isn’t true. Representative Wendy Warburton proves that adage in this argument from Annals of of the Idiotic:
Believe it or not, clamping down on medical marijuana is a big jobs issue, too! Companies with safety concerns, like oil companies, have been nervous about doing business in Montana since the proliferation of marijuana use. We heard testimony that Montana is now labeled a “source country” like Mexico and South American countries. Motorcycle gangs and organized crime have moved into Montana to ferry drugs grown here to their cohorts on the coast. Bills to repeal marijuana or to severely restrict its distribution are working through the legislature.
Putting aside how idiotic and ill-informed these claims are, how does Warburton reconcile her jobs claim with her bill (HB 201) which would have allowed employees to bring guns to work? Or her vote for Krayton Kerns’s HB 384, which allows concealed weapons in bars and banks, and which was opposed uniformly by businesses? Are we to believe that oil companies are too afraid to come to Montana because of medical marijuana but somehow will be unconcerned about employees and customers packing heat?
It’s interesting to note that the Representative didn’t mention her other job-creating bills, like criminalizing miscarriage, pretending that global warming doesn’t exist, creating a militia, or allowing underage designated drivers.
P.S.: Representative Warburton, Montana, despite your efforts, is not a “country.”
In a month when we’ve written 66 posts here at Intelligent Discontent (more than the last five months of 2010 combined), it’s probably appropriate to take a moment to thank the Montana GOP at the Legislature for inspiring me to get back into writing. They’ve also inspired a number of excellent posts all over the Montana blog world, but this week’s Montana Blog Roundup doesn’t feature the Birchers and Birthers we’ve come to know and love. Instead, it’s a more diverse collection, a phrase that no doubt sends fear to Representative Hansen’s heart.
Enjoy these excellent posts from Montana’s blogs during the past week.
- Over at Left in the West, still the big dog of Montana’s progressive blogs, an anonymous post led to a great discussion about the future of that site, the effectiveness of blogs in the era of Facebook and Twitter, and what it means to be a progressive. Great stuff—and it’s to Rob Kailey’s credit that he promoted it. Read it—and join the discussion here.
- Rob continued his great work over at his own site, shredding the moral equivalency and hypocrisy of the right-leaning blogs, who are ignoring the the Montana Legislature’s assault on rights and real calls for violence from government officials to post about mean Tweets. Great stuff.
- Duganz wrote a really thought-provoking post about American attitudes towards womyn, using the Iowa wrestler and calls to end legalized prostitution to frame a discussion about how “we give our women slack, but we still hold the rope. And oh how righteously we tug it when our women get out of line.” It’s a great post, and a reminder that I need to think and write more about the feminism I believe in.
- MT Cowgirl reminds us that the TEA Party’s spokesman in the Helena area (well, part of it) is awfully fond of violent rhetoric. I’m not terribly excited about someone calling for a “very very very loud message” during an Open Carry rally at the Capitol. On the bright side, fewer than a dozen will show up, unless you count all the media there.
- Finally, when even Rob Natelson thinks your absurd nullification schemes are unconstitutional and politically poisonous, you probably want to re-think it. Somehow, I suspect that won’t happen.
Like many Republican candidates nationwide, the presumptive favorites in a couple of GOP primaries in Montana, Rick Hill and Steve Daines, are running far to the right to make sure that they win their primaries. Needing the support of the Tea Party to ensure primary support and no third party challenge, both men are shackling themselves to the secessionist rhetoric of an already discredited movement.
In two years, after this legislative session’s excesses and two years of Tea Party obstruction in Washington, the Tea Party brand is going to be even more toxic than it is now, leaving Daines and Hill (both renowned opportunists) in very uncomfortable positions.
From the outset, Hill has been positioning himself as having been “in the Tea Party before there was a Tea Party” and Daines has jumped on every single opportunity to ingratiate himself with Montana Republicans, who seem most interested in the fact that he has a lot of money than principles. Currently, that opportunity is the Tea Party, and Daines is throwing himself in with them completely.
Listen to what they’re saying at the Victor Lincoln-Reagan Dinner, courtesy of Ravalli Republic reporter Whitney Bermes twitter feed:
- Daines refers to the passing of Obamacare as the “tyranny we saw from our government.”
- Rick Hill – “We need to push back against the federal government.”
Keep Reading
Quite the lede opens Tom Lutey’s piece in the Billings Gazette about how Billings-area legislators saw the first half of the session:
Citing extreme media bias, Republican lawmakers home on their midsession break Friday told supporters that their best work was being ignored by the press.
What follows is an awfully one-sided look at the Legislature’s first half, with significant omissions about what the Republicans have done—and not done—to open this session. It’s clear that Republicans are getting nervous that the public is understandably frustrated by the absurdity coming out of the session, but rather than fixing the problem and focusing on jobs, they’re going back to the old tried and true strategy of blaming the media. In this story, it worked.
Lutey got played like the referees get played by Phil Jackson during a playoff series; after so much crying about media bias, he let the Billings Republicans get away with saying whatever they wanted—in the name of “balance.”
Lutey lets the Republicans (without any response from Democrats or labor) claim that their punitive worker’s compensation bill will create jobs and that (without a response from Democrats or environmental groups) that there MEPA rollbacks will not harm the environment.
Finally, Lutey even makes an argument for the Republican legislators, without even troubling one of of them to make it for him:
Many of the social and political bills that have captured headlines in the first half of the session will not in the second half, because several weren’t transmitted to the opposite House. Those that don’t cross by the halfway point are done.
That’s a handy way to throw away the first half of the session—none of those pesky “social” bills really mattered because the work of the Legislature happens in the second half anyway. If true, couldn’t the fiscal conservatives in the GOP have started work immediately on the the budget and left sex ed. and constitutional scholarship at home?
There is a reason that Montana is becoming a national laughingstock. It’s not media bias; it’s Republican extremism. For a reporter to indulge these paranoid fantasies and lame excuses is a real shame. Republican Representative Walter McNutt said it best: “Quit scaring our constituents and quit making us look like a bunch of buffoons.”
If only.
Given the transmittal break and a exciting weekend plans of grading more essays than I can imagine, I thought I’d take the chance to post the #MTLeg Tweets of the Week a day early this time. Once again, outstanding work from everyone, despite the proliferation of angry sock puppet accounts.
The Runners Up
@MontanaNut: In interest of open/transparent govt, #MTLeg should provide Gary Marbut with personal desk on both House & Senate floors
@elliehill: Sweeeeeet! Pres. Lincoln visits us in the House… maybe he can talk to the GOP about his thoughts on the nullification bills! #MTLeg
@nikizupanic: Nullification: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” #mtleg
@trentbolger: Wilmer: 15 Members of the House receive Farm subsidies to the the tune 3.194 Million dollars.Be consistent and give your checks back. #mtleg
The Winner This Week
@ShelbiDantic: Fav quote of the day, Rep. Cook, “my passport is still valid- I don’t have to get one for
the confederate counties of MT.” Great day. #MTleg
While no deadly blow darts were hurled during the press conference, Speaker of the House Mike Milburn certainly beat the hell out of the truth when talking about medical marijuana in Montana yesterday.
Apparently, the newspapers have missed entire neighborhoods in the state turning into areas in which episodes of The Wire could have been filmed:
Milburn said Montana now is confronted with “an out-of-control organized drug trade” involving organized crime.
“We’re talking about infiltrating into the schools, into the neighborhoods, taking down whole neighborhoods,” Milburn said. “That’s what we’re talking about now. So we’re talking about a totally different issue than what the people voted in.”
And Montana’s high school age population is either much smaller than I realized or Speaker Milburn is worse at math than James Knox is at paying his employees:
At the GOP press conference, Peterson asked if Montanans want one-third of high school kids with medical-marijuana cards.
Official state statistics show that 51 people under age 18 have been issued medical marijuana cards as of Feb. 1, or 0.18 percent of the 28,362 people with cards.
There’s certainly a debate to be had about the status of medicinal marijuana in Montana. Perhaps the law needs revision or simply better enforcement. When my high school debate class offers more reasoned discussion and accurate statistics than the Speaker of the Montana House, though, that debate certainly isn’t going to happen in the Legislature.
It’s fine that Speaker Milburn believes that the medical marijuana law isn’t working. It’s fine that he believes that Montana voters were wrong. It’s not fine, though, for him to rely on hyperbolic histrionics (read: lies) to make his point.
