Jon Tester

Rehberg and Tester on Wilderness: A Week in Review

16 October 2011

While some maintain that there is no difference between Senator Tester and Representative Rehberg when it comes to protecting Montana’s wild lands, the past week provides a stark contrast in their approaches. A letter to the Bozeman Chronicle from the Montana Sierra Club reveals that Rehberg’s priorities are to strip Montana lands from landmark environmental [...]

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Tester Votes Against “Free” Trade, For American Workers

15 October 2011

Lost in the outrage over Senator Tester’s sensible vote on the Obama Jobs bill was a series of votes that demonstrate the Senator’s commitment to American workers in general—and those in Montana specifically. The Great Falls Tribune reports that Senators Tester and Baucus split their votes, with Senator Tester rejecting the “Free” Trade Agreements with [...]

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Lazy Political Reporting 101: The AP in Montana

13 October 2011

Why doesn’t the Montana political press just let Erik Iverson write their stories for them? In today’s big news—that Senator Tester is crushing Dennis Rehberg in fundraising for the 2012 race, we’re treated to this bit of information: Rehberg campaign manager Erik Iverson aimed to discredit Tester’s larger total by pointing out that he was [...]

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Senator Tester’s Jobs Bill Vote: A Defense

12 October 2011

The news that Senator Tester voted against President Obama’s Jobs bill this week has met with a somewhat predictable response: calls for a primary challenge, refusals to support the Senator, and accusations that he is betraying Democratic values. While I understand some of the frustration, the reaction seems overblown—and in some cases, motivated by personal [...]

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You’ve Got to Hand It to the NRSC

27 September 2011

I can’t put my fingers on it, but I feel like there’s something a bit misleading about this image from the latest GOP attack ad against Senator Tester. I mean, there are are seven or ten other falsehoods in the video, but there’s something about this picture that I can’t quite get a grasp on. [...]

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Rehberg Introduces Another Bill To Get in the News

14 September 2011

Once again, the Montana media is letting Dennis “Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing” Rehberg milk his opposition to national monuments for another moment of attention, ignoring both his utter incompetence as a legislator and dishonesty as a politician. Consider this quote in the Great Falls Tribune: As a reason for the legislation, Rehberg has cited [...]

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Why I Support Senator Tester and Other Liberals Should Too

12 June 2011

Inspired by a conversation with JC on the never-ending swipe fee debate, in which it was suggested that Senator Tester was anti-labor, I decided to look into the reasons I support his candidacy for re-election in 2012. That support doesn’t mean I won’t continue to criticize bad votes and it certainly doesn’t mean that I [...]

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Swipe Fee Reform Costs Passed on to You!

11 June 2011

We’ve already learned that retailers are unlikely to pass on debit charge savings from last year’s financial reform bill. In fact, some, like Home Depot, are already telling investors that they plan to increase their profits by millions because of the “reform.” So who’s going to pick up those lost revenues in the banking industry? [...]

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Senator Tester Is Looking Out for Montana Community Banks

7 June 2011

There has been a lot of one-sided attention paid to Senator Tester’s Debit Interchange Fee Study Act, with some suggesting that the Senator is taking the side of large banks against Montana retailers. This piece in Forbes by Tim Chen, from a month ago, makes it clear that the real story is much more nuanced, [...]

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Senator Tester and Representative Rehberg on the Patriot Act

23 May 2011

Thanks, Senator Tester, for standing up for the Constitution: Long before I ever got to the Senate, the Patriot Act was sold to us as a toolbox of sorts to give U.S. agents the tools they need to find, fight and kill terrorists. But what we got from the Patriot Act was a law that [...]

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The Montana GOP Just Ran Over Credibility

16 May 2011

Let’s be honest. The Montana GOP is such an amateurish organization that it actually chose budding juvenile fiction auteur and anti-voting activist Will Deschamps as its chair, has a web page that was banned by Geocities for being too ugly for the web in 1997, and uses a series of short-lived astroturf blogs to regurgitate [...]

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Montana Politics Quick Hits

15 May 2011

I haven’t actually retired from writing on this site, but the combination of exhaustion stemming from AP test preparation and the lingering sour smell in Helena from the Legislature seemed to warrant a little break. A couple of stories in the news the past few days presented the opportunity to jump back into the fray. [...]

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