14 March 2022 — 0503 mdt
Close of filing for Montana elective office; two kinds of incumbents; soapbox candidacies; candidate roster churn
By James Conner
Last day to file for elective office. The window for filing for elective office in Montana closes at 1700 MDT today. No statewide partisan offices are on the ballot, but two seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are (and already there’s a glut of candidates for each seat). So are two seats on the five-member Public Service Commission. Link to the filing rosters.
10 March 2022 — 2210 mst
Is Gov. Greg Gianforte the unluckiest hunter in Montana?
By James Conner
Jim Smith wrote a short letter wondering how wildlife chef Gianforte would cook lion steak. James Conner wrote a song for GG: D’ye ken Greg G., Eighteenth Century man.
Most hunters never kill a critter that has been tagged and radio collared by wildlife researchers — and they don’t want to, as the public’s reaction seldom is favorable. Gianforte, however, has twice shot radio collared prey since becoming governor.
28 December 2021. Hunting on national forest lands north of Yellowstone Park, Gianforte’s hunting party’s hounds tree mountain lion M220, a five-year-old male wearing an NPS GPS tracking collar. After ascertaining the cat was male, Gianforte shot it dead. As required, he reported the kill — his public relations person said he “harvested” the lion — to the proper authorities within 12 hours. [Joshua Partlow, Washington Post]
9 March 2022 — 0937 mst
Montana’s candidate filing window closes Monday —
Democrats have filed in only 53 of 100 MT House seats
By James Conner
Montana’s Democrats are experiencing extraordinary difficulty recruiting candidates to run for the legislature. With the filing window closing in five days, only 64 Democrats have filed for the Montana House of Representatives, and for only 53 of that chamber’s 100 seats.
Almost twice as many Republicans, 117, have filed for the house. Only six house seats do not yet have a Republican candidate. Five districts have Libertarian candidates. One independent filed for HD-3. Her status is “pending;” independent candidates must qualify by submitting a minimum number of signatures.
2 March 2022 — 1045 mst
State of the Union speech, Ukraine
By James Conner
SOTU. After losing my network connection three times, I decided to read President Biden’s state of the union speech. Although written at an eighth grade level, Teleprompter formatting — 370 of the 487 sentences were their own paragraph — made it difficult to read. Here are the standard metrics:
23 February 2022 — 1019 mst
Putin’s revanchism may start a new Cold War
By James Conner
“Never let any Government imagine that it can choose perfectly safe courses; rather let it expect to have to take very doubtful ones, because it is found in ordinary affairs that one never seeks to avoid one trouble without running into another; but prudence consists in knowing how to distinguish the character of troubles, and for choice to take the lesser evil.” Machiavelli, The Prince.
Sunday, I suggested that the Minsk framework offered a workable solution to the Ukrainian crisis. Monday, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin kiboshed that when announced diplomatic recognition of the predominately Russian speaking breakaway provinces (map) that he was sending Russian armies to the provinces to serve as peacekeepers.
Yesterday, Putin upped the ante, demanding (1) recognition of the entire region claimed by the rebels, (2) Ukraine’s recognition that Crimea now is a part of Russia, and (3) that Ukraine rid itself of sophisticated weapons, such as Javalin antitank missiles, obtained from the west. Otherwise, he implied, he’ll launch a full scale invasion of Ukraine.
Putin may be bluffing, but the odds that he is are diminishing by the hour. In a startlingly aggrieved and bitter speech Monday, he argued that Ukraine is part and parcel of Russia and has no legal or moral right to exist as an independent nation.
20 February 2022 — 2137 mst
Will Putin reprise the Soviet Cold War
invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia?
By James Conner
Three generations ago, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia to reinstall pro-Soviet puppet governments. I remember both events and how they shook the west. President Joe Biden also remembers, which may be why he believes Putin has decided to invade Ukraine — and why he also believes that diplomacy may yet spare Ukraine a terrible beating and Russia crushing sanctions.
Hungary
Russia invaded Hungary in late 1956 to crush a freedom movement that began 12 days before. I remember watching on snowy black and white television newsreels of the fighting.
19 February 2022
What Does John Fuller Mean?
Guest Essay By Kyle Waterman
In a recent piece, state Rep. John Fuller (R HD-8, Kalispell), a former teacher of American Government for more than 45 years, revealed that he believes democracy is a tyranny that has “failed as miserably as socialism.”
What exactly does Rep. Fuller mean when he says democracy is tyrannical and has failed us? The Founding Fathers designed our form of government to protect from tyranny. They also framed the Constitution on the very core of democracy — the idea that, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” In American democracy, that means fair and free elections.
If Mr. Fuller believes that democracy has failed, where does he think the government should derive its power? Military force? Surveillance? Coercion? Disinformation? Because that is how authoritarian governments do it — and that’s real tyranny.
18 February 2022 — 0834 mst
Voting Is Free Speech
Guest Essay By James C. Nelson
Montana Supreme Court Justice (Ret.)
When we think of freedom of speech, the spoken word is usually what comes to mind. But the First Amendment of the federal Constitution (and, hence, Article II, section 7 of Montana’s Constitution) also protect symbolic speech.
Symbolic speech is non-verbal action that clearly conveys a specific message to anyone who sees and reads it. It can take the form of public protests, such as sit-ins and marches, demonstrations, wearing buttons, armbands or clothing items such as t-shirts, nudity, flag-waving, flag-burning, burning draft cards and bras, braille, sign language and even non-criminal actions that others might find offensive (Note 1) (the universal one finger salute), to name a few.
My friend, Alan Nicholson, and I were exchanging emails, and he raised an interesting question: Could the right to vote be an exercise of free speech? I believe that Alan is correct, voting is the exercise of free speech. I suggest that it is a form of symbolic speech.
16 February 2022
A rare case in which votes cast illegally
may have changed an election’s outcome
By James Conner
Because so few votes are cast illegally, those votes almost never affect the outcome of an election. But in Dobson, Montana, a community of 125 located along Highway 2 just northeast of the Fort Belknap Reservation, two fraudulent votes may have determined the outcome of a municipal election last November in which the incumbent mayor was re-elected 21–19.
After the election, investigators found that two Dobson elementary school teachers, Grace O. Albia and Jannet Benitez Zeta, both citizens of the Phillipenes, neither a citizen of the United States, had registered to vote, and had voted in the election.
16 February 2022
Two Rights — A Multitude of Wrongs
Guest Essay By James C. Nelson
Montana Supreme Court Justice (Ret.)
Montana’s Constitution contains two fundamental rights that are distinct, yet, are connected in an important way.
The first of these rights is Article II, section 7 titled “Freedom of speech, expression and press.” This provision states, in pertinent part: “No law shall be passed impairing the freedom of speech or expression. Every person shall be free to speak or publish whatever he will on any subject, being responsible for all abuse of that liberty” …
The second of these rights is Article II, section 9 titled “Right to know.” This provision states: “No person shall be deprived of the right to examine documents or to observe the deliberations of all public bodies or agencies of state government and its subdivisions, except in cases in which the demand of individual privacy clearly exceeds the merits of public disclosure.”
9 February 2022 — 0440 mst
Verify, don’t trust
Learn and share the abilities needed to be
smart, active consumers of news and information
Guest essay by Rebecca Johnson
As a Montanan who is very concerned about the neverending spread of misinformation throughout our country causing enormous problems with dire consequences, I contacted the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan national education nonprofit that provides programs and resources for educators and the public to teach, learn and share the abilities needed to be smart, active consumers of news and information and equal and engaged participants in a democracy. The result is this article which I hope you read.
Misinformation is one of the gravest threats facing us, but we are not doing enough to educate people how to recognize fact from fiction in the flood of information they encounter every day. MIT researchers found that tweets containing falsehoods reach 1500 people on Twitter six times faster than truthful tweets.
8 February 2022 — 0001 mst
Illegitimate Political Discourse
Guest Essay By James C. Nelson
Montana Supreme Court Justice (Ret.)
In censuring Representatives Liz Chaney and Adam Kinzinger for their audacity in serving on the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection, the Republican National Committee (RNC) declared that the Select Committee was “persecut[ing] ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” (Note 1)
Just so we are all on the same page about the event being referred to by the RNC, this would be the one where a mob of some 10,000 people (variously described as domestic terrorists, insurrectionists or tourists — depending who is doing the describing), fired up by Donald Trump and other members of his cult stormed the Nation’s Capitol building in an apparent effort to disrupt the Congresspersons and officials engaged in counting the electoral college votes and confirming that Joe Biden won the 2020 Presidential election. The ultimate goal of this effort was to re-install Mr. Trump as President, notwithstanding that he lost both the electoral college vote and the popular vote.
7 February 2022 — 0833 mst
A cover-up of a $24 million scandal?
A photographic history of the renaming
of Kalispell’s hospital and medical center
By James Conner
In early December, 2020, Kalispell Regional Healthcare, formerly Kalispell Regional Hospital, announced it was changing its name to Logan Health in honor of Logan Pass in Glacier National Park. The decision to change names was doubtless made months, perhaps years, earlier. But now that the medical center was ready to start changing signs, the public had to be told and a rationale for the change had to be provided.
I have a hunch that the official reason for the change, and the real reason for the change, may be different. More on that in a moment. First, a look at how the name changed on the building.
From my front porch, the hospital, approximately two miles distant and slightly north of east, is visible against the 4,000-foot wall of the Swan Range 10–12 miles to the east. Over the years, it’s been one of my favorite photographic targets. The image below was made in mid-afternoon yesterday.
2 February 2022 — 0624 mst
Clean Water? It’s Too Demanding and Expensive
Guest Essay By James C. Nelson
Montana Supreme Court Justice (Ret.)
There’s the old saw about obscenity: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” Thanks to SB-358, enacted by the 2021 legislature and signed into law by the Governor, that’s close to the standard that the Department of Environmental Quality is now required to use for measuring water quality: “I can’t define it, but it looks OK to me.”
As a recent editorial penned by Bozeman Chronicle Editorial Board pointed out, Senate Bill 358, passed earlier this year, requires the state move from objective, “numeric” standards for determining water quality to amorphous, subjective “narrative” standards for that determination — essentially from measurable objective standards to something more ambiguous.
These water quality standards are important, because they regulate the flow of nutrients into rivers — things like nitrogen and phosphorus, pollutants that promote the growth of algae and other plant life that degrade water quality and fish habitat.
31 January 2022 — 0741 mst
Court allows CI-121 supporters to gather signatures while
it considers a lawsuit filed by the initiative’s opponents
By James Conner
LEGAL DOCUMENTS
Combined as one PDF: Request for writ of supervisory control, the complaint, plantiffs’ brief to Judge McMahon, McMahon’s TRO. Monforton’s brief for Abbott’s court.
Briefs are due Friday in the anti-CI-121 lawsuit now before district judge Christopher Abbott, a Bullock appointee confirmed in a close vote last year. Abbott filed for election on 13 January.
Background
CI-121, approved for signature gathering in early January by Montana secretary of state and attorney general, would cap residential property taxes at their 2019 values and limit annual tax increases. It is reminiscent of, but not identical to, California’s Proposition 13.
Abbott, on 25 January, lifted the temporary restraining order suspending signature gathering that district judge Michael F. McMahon imprudently issued on 13 January. See stories by the Helena IR and the Daily Montanan.
31 January 2022 — 0420 mst
Flathead Electric’s 2021 free LED bulbs
are better than its 2019 free LED bulbs
Twice beginning in 2019, Flathead Electric, Montana’s largest rural electric cooperative, has made available to its members packages of free LED light bulbs and other energy saving devices.
The 2019 package that I discussed on 23 August 2019 included eight LED bulbs with a light output equivalent to a 60-watt incandescent bulb. Last year’s package contained a low flow showerhead, a smart power strip, and eight LED bulbs with a light output equivalent to a 75-watt incandescent.
29 January 2022 — 1758 mst
Why the tax cap initiative (CI-121) is
bad for Montana and bad for public schools
Guest essay by Jim Smith
Republicans are pushing a new Tax Cap Initiative (CI-121), to be on the ballot for Montana voters. CI-121 limits annual increases in valuations of residential property to either 2% or the inflation rate (whichever is lower) when assessing property taxes if the property is not newly constructed, significantly improved, or had a change of ownership since January 1, 2019. CI-121 establishes 2019 as the base year for the valuations of residential property. It requires the Legislature to limit total ad valorem property taxes on residential property to 1% or less of the assessed valuation.
If passed, CI-121 will drastically change how the state funds education. Currently, 29% of public school funds come from local property tax, 64% from state aid and 7% from federal and other sources. The Governor’s Budget and Program Planning analysis of CI-121 predicts an $84 million dollar decrease in school funding in the first three years.
28 January 2022 — 0534 mst
There’s No More Activist Court Than the US Supreme Court
Guest Essay By James C. Nelson
Montana Supreme Court Justice (Ret.)
In legal briefing and in public statements, involving litigation surrounding Armstrong v. State (1) — holding that women have an individual privacy right to obtain a pre-viability abortion free from government interference under Montana’s Constitution—Montana’s Attorney General, Austin Knudsen, has accused the Montana Supreme Court of judicial activism and legislating from the bench.
Ironically, General Knudsen levels his claims against the wrong Supreme Court.
When Ronald Reagan became president, he set out to change the nature of the Supreme Court, which, for years, had been committed to defending civil rights against state discrimination. The Court relied upon the 14th Amendment, equal protection and due process clauses.
24 January 2022 — 1733 mst
You Don’t Have to Read ‘Em —
But You Can’t Ban ‘Em
Guest Essay By James C. Nelson
Montana Supreme Court Justice (Ret.)
It looks like the self-appointed morality police are at it again. Two articles (one, two) in the Daily Montanan discuss the book banning wars in Kalispell and in Billings. The books at issue are about LGBTQ+ children, and, by some, are considered to be, in part, child pornography. If, in fact, that were true federal authorities would have been all over them long before they got to a library near you—dissemination of child pornography being a crime, after all.
Of course, book burning and banning is nothing new. In what was to become the USA, the morality police were burning objectional reading material in the 1600s. And as history progressed, any number of books were banned by one moral authority or another, including, without limitation, Walt Whitman’s book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. And, of course, we are reminded of the stark reality of book burning in the wartime videos of the Nazi’s throwing books into a huge bonfire in May 1933.
24 January 2022 — 0925 mst
HB 651; An Anti-Citizen Initiative Law
Guest Essay By James C. Nelson
Montana Supreme Court Justice (Ret.)
During the last legislative session, while I was doing some legal research, I accidently came across HB 651. This bill (which is now law) overhauled and imposed significant burdens on the Citizens Initiative (CI) process—guaranteed to Montanans by our Constitution, primarily at Article III, sections 4,6 and 9, but also at Article II, section 14, Article IV, section 7, Article V, section 1, Article VI, section 10 Article XI, sections 7 and 8, and Article XIV, section 2.
Given the importance that the framers placed on giving citizens the right and power to enact laws and constitutional provisions by initiative, I thought at the time that it wouldn’t be long before all or parts of HB 651 hit the litigation fan. And as George Ochenski discusses in his January 23, 2022, Independent Record column, I wasn’t far off the mark.
19 January 2022
MT’s best hunting idea since that spear hunting bill
An Exciting Alternative to Gianforte’s Grisly Grizzly Proposal
Guest essay by Jim Smith
Gov. Greg Gianforte’s has put forward a petition to remove most Montana grizzly bears from federal Endangered Species Act protection. This petition claims the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem grizzly bear population is ready to survive under state management. Not so subtlety pushed in this proposal is the desire to allow trophy grizzly bear hunting, most likely in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Gianforte even intimated that when permits to hunt grizzlies are a reality, he will be applying for one.
18 January 2022 — 1328 mst
Secure Our Right to Vote
Guest essay by Rebecca Johnson
Recent legislative actions in Montana have made access to voting harder. Restricting eligible voters’ access to voting does not equate to more secure elections. For example, let’s look at the new voting law (HB-176) “eliminating same-day voter registration on Election Day” to see if it truly protects our elections by making voting less accessible to Montanans. From 2006 to 2018, approximately 60,000 Montana registered and voted on Election Day without a single case of voter fraud (source). 2020 recorded the second-highest use of same-day voter registration by Montanans (approximately 8,200 Montanans) to vote in this election, and again, without a single case of voter fraud. That means more and more Montanans are choosing this method to vote in each upcoming election. But now in 2022 with this new law in place, there will be zero Montanans using same-day voter registration to vote.
10 January 2022 — 0714 mst
Where do regulations come from?
Guest essay by Jim Smith & Rebecca Johnson
Sunday, January 2, 2022’s Helena IR published another column from Kendall Cotton, on Red Tape Relief. Mr. Cotton states that “the accumulation of thousands of regulations has been shown to stifle economic growth and substantially increase the cost of doing business.” He states that many of these regulations are “unnecessary.” Many of us can probably concur with this sentiment in some regard, but with the caveat of saying, like beauty, unnecessary is in the eye of the beholder.