Archives Index, 2019 January
29 January 2019 — 1557 mst
Senate committee hears Sen. John Esp’s bill
to repeal Daylight Saving Time in Montana
If passed, the bill, SB-153, would put the issue to the voters as a legislative referendum. If the voters approved the referendum, Montana would revert to Mountain Standard Time all year long. Esp (R-Big Timber), back in the legislature after completing his term limits political exile, represents SD-30. The bill is in the Senate’s state administration committee.
During the DST months, that would have the effect of putting Montana on Pacific Daylight Time, so that noon in Seattle would be noon in Noxon, near Montana’s western border, and noon in Sydney, next to Montana’s eastern border. But noon in Sydney would be 1400 Central Daylight Time in Williston, North Dakota. For a map of repeal’s consequences, see my post for 21 February 2017.
27 January 2019
Southern gospel for a northwestern Sunday
J.D. Jarvis wrote Take Your Shoes Off Moses in 1967. It quickly became a standard, performed by the Stanley Brothers, Ricky Skaggs, the Clinch Mountain Boys, and others. Here, Texas singer Courtney Patton performs the song, backed up by fellow Texan Jamie Wilson.
26 January 2019
Tomorrow’s Face the State will preview how cruel
the Montana Republicans’ rewrite of Medicaid will be
Mike Dennison’s guests on KXLH will be Rep. Ed Buttrey (R-Great Falls) and Rep. Mary Caffero (D-Helena). The program commences at the unprime (and unholy) hour of 0630 MST.
If Montana’s Republican legislators could get their way, there would be no expanded Medicaid in Montana. They don’t believe in it. But Montana’s hospitals need the funding, so Buttrey, et al, are grudgingly trying to provide it while making sure that as few as possible Montanans are covered, and that those who are covered are humiliated with mean-spirited and gratuitous conditions such as drug testing.
25 January 2019 — 1546 mst
Our government will be opened for three weeks —
then Trump and McConnell probably will close it again
The NY Times, Washington Post, and other news outlets, are reporting that President Trump has agreed to a bill that reopens our government for three weeks so that federal workers can do their jobs and get paid for doing them. The “compromise” does not address funding for Trump’s steel bollard fence along the Mexican border.
This sounds better than it is. Three weeks isn’t much time to cut a deal, but it’s plenty of time to take some of the heat off Trump, who told the Washington Post:
If a “fair deal” does not emerge by Feb. 15, Trump said, there could be another government shutdown or he could declare a national emergency, a move that could allow him to direct the military to build the wall without congressional consent. Such an action would likely face an immediate legal challenge.
For Trump, “fair deal” means he gets $5.7 billion for his wall, the Democrats get nothing and are humiliated, and everyone knows that Trump’s bullying and disregard for the nation, and his disregard of his constitutional obligation to see that the laws are faithfully executed, made him top dog.
This isn’t over.
23 January 2019 — 2200 mst
Democrats need an Electoral College
strategy to defeat Trump in 2020
Like the minor characters in the opening scenes of a Hitchcock thriller, or a Shakespearean drama, light to middleweight Democrats are announcing their candidacies for the 2020 Democratic nomination for President. Some, Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Buttigieg for example, appear to be auditioning for the nomination for Vice President. Others are running to raise their political visibility for a run for a different office or to call attention to an issue.
22 January 2019 — 1024 mst
Only a financial moron would want to buy Colstrip’s
dirty old power plants for $500 million — or even $1
Colstrip’s coal fired power plants are old, dirty, and of dubious profitability. The two oldest, smallest, plants will be shut down by the end of 2020. The two larger plants might stay on line a bit longer, but they’re nearing the end of their economic lives, and are likely to be shut down sooner than later.
That’s no surprise. Coal fired power plants are closing across the nation — see the IEEFA’s report, Record Drop in U.S. Coal-Fired Capacity Likely in 2018 — and are being replaced by natural gas, solar, and wind.
Those facts have not, however, deterred Rep. Rodney Garcia (R-Billings, HD-52) from offering HB-203, a scheme for the State of Montana to raise $500 million to purchase Colstrip’s cranky old power plants and keep them running so that the residents of Colstrip can keep their jobs running the filthy old polluters.
21 January 2019 — 0208 mst
POTUS, SOTU, and the time bomb in our Constitution
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi asked President Trump to delay his State of the Union message until our government is fully open, or to send it to Congress as a written report. That outraged some of his supporters, who accused Pelosi of impinging on his constitutional prerogatives, but although her request was a bit cheeky, it was well within her constitutional powers.18 January 2019 — 1443 mst
Missoula legislators Malek and Marler introduce bills
to ban or regulate certain single use plastics
Updated 23 January. The bills would ban foamed polystyrene food containers, prohibit eateries from dispensing plastic straws without the customer’s request, and require that single use shopping bags be biodegradable.
17 January 2019 — 2223 mst
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer should stop
hurling playground taunts at President Trump
After President Trump boxed himself in a cul-de-sac on 11 December 2018, I wrote that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer:
15 January 2019 — 1425 mst
Regarding the Keystone Pipeline, MT AFL-CIO leader says:
“…I don’t want to piss off the native caucus this early in the session.”
Yesterday, the Montana AFL-CIO’s political director, Adam Haight, blasted the email below to a number of labor leaders.
The AFL-CIO wants to build the Keystone Pipeline because it would provide jobs for union members. That’s not really news, as many labor organizations, especially in the construction trades, seldom encounter a jobs producing project they believe is too destructive to the environment to support.
Here, Haight opposes Sen. Frank Smith’s bill to tighten environmental safeguards on the Keystone because that could delay construction, possibly for years. But Haight doesn’t want to actively oppose the bill, which he thinks will fail in committee, because he doesn’t want to “piss off the native caucus,” whose votes he’s counting on for other bills.
12 January 2019 — 1831 mst
Notes on & music for El Presidente Trumps’s borderline wall
President of the Montana State Senate Scott Sales (R-Bozeman, SD-35) thinks building Trump’s boondoggle barrier along our border with Mexico is such a great idea that he’s asked for a bill (LC-3098) to appropriate $8 million of Montana’s money for the project. His proposal has received a certain amount of attention, not all of it favorable.
How he arrived at $8 million is a puzzle. Trump wants $5.7 billion to build 234 miles of his barrier (a high picket of steel slats, he says). If the money is allocated on the basis of population, Montana’s share would be approximately $17 million (one million Montanans, 328 million Americans). Sales proposes spending just 47 percent of that. Coincidentally, 47 percent was Matt Rosendale share of the vote in the election for the U.S. Senate he lost to Jon Tester.
10 January 2019
A personal note to readers from
Flathead Memo’s editor and janitor
Although I had planned to publish on a daily basis in 2019, concentrating on Montana’s legislative session, that plan has gone awry.
9 January 2019 — 1503 mst
Trump negotiates like a protection racket thug
Last night, President Trump could have used his national address as a bully pulpit for compromise and fully opening the government. Instead, he used his prime time pulpit to bully his adversaries with threats, falsehoods, and distortions.
Today, he slammed his fist on a table and roared out of the room when Nancy Pelosi refused to accede to his demands.
Federal workers, and certain classes of citizens, especially the poor, and farmers, are being held hostage to his demand for almost $6 billion to build approximately 230 miles of a vaguely defined wall or fence along our border with Mexico.
This is how thugs in organized crime negotiate a fee for “neighborhood protection services.” Pay up, or your windows will be smashed, your leg broken with a sledge hammer, and your daughter raped.
8 January 2019
Stand down notice
Flathead Memo is standing down until late tomorrow or early Thursday.
4 January 2019 — 0400 mst
Friday roundup
Montana’s legislature convenes its 2019 session Monday. It has 90 legislative days to work through as many as 3,018 bills. Apart from the budget, the major issues will be expanded Medicaid, which expires at the end of June, attempts to impose draconian limits on prescribing narcotics, and the usual attempts to enact a deeply conservative social agenda.
3 January 2019 — 0832 mst
Starting Sunday, the sun begins rising earlier
Today is the antepenultimate day of the year’s latest sunrise. At Flathead Electric’s Stillwater Station, the calculated time of sunrise is 0828 MST. The calculation assumes the horizon is flat, so the sun doesn’t appear over the mountains until a few minutes later. Come Sunday, Ol’ Sol rises a minute earlier.
Using software developed by the U.S. Naval Observatory, I’ve prepared a spreadsheet with the times of sunrise, sunset, meridian transit, and civil twilights, for Stillwater Station.
2 January 2019 — 1909 mst
MT SecST Corey Stapleton is not running for re-election
Given the job he’s doing at SecST — or the job he’s done on SecST, take your choice — that’s good. Instead, he’s running for governor — again. That’s not unexpected, and in certain quarters it’s good for a gut busting guffaw.