A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

1 May 2015

Whitefish sales tax, thugs, Christie’s demise, & what’s responsible

Whitefish watershed election. Seeking to protect their city’s source of drinking water, the voters in Whitefish on 28 April approved a 50 percent increase in their city’s resort (sales) tax by a four to one margin. Forty-nine percent of the voters who were mailed ballots cast votes. That’s a much higher turnout rate than usual for a special election.

“Thug” is not a racially tinged word. Some people, who don’t know their history, think “thug” is a code word for “nigger.” As Megan Garber explained in The Atlantic a few days ago, the word’s roots are in India and are centuries old

In all that, the history of “thug” goes back not just to the hip-hop scene of the 1990s—to Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, to Tupac Shakur and the “Thug Life” tattoo that stretched, arc-like, across his abdomen — but back, also, to India. To the India, specifically, of the 1350s. “Thug” comes from the Hindi thuggee or tuggee (pronounced “toog-gee” or “toog”); it is derived from the…ṭhag, which means “deceiver” or “thief” or “swindler.” The Thugs, in India, were a gang of professional thieves and assassins who operated from the 14th century and into the 19th. They worked, in general, by joining travelers, gaining their trust…and then murdering them — strangulation was their preferred method — and stealing their valuables.

Thug is a colorblind word. I’m going to continue using it to describe muggers, rioters, and thieves, among others.

Chris Christie’s Presidential campaign just ended. He isn’t ready to admit that yet, but one of his top associates just pleaded guilty to shutting down two lanes of traffic on the first day of school to punish the mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing Christie’s run for governor of New Jersey. There’s a word for people who do things like that: morons. We don’t know whether the grand jury named Christie as an unindicted co-conspirator, but we will at some point, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he received that honor. Figuratively speaking, Christie is a thug.

Independent political bloggers can’t get MT Legislature press credentials. Mike Brown has the story at The Western Word today. Mike knows his politics and has blogged six days a week for a decade. The same is true for Don Pogreba at Intelligent Discontent. Montana Cowgirl has better sources than many mainstream media reporters. In fact, some Montana political blogs are read daily by Montana’s elite MSM political reporters. Independent political blogs with a history of blogging on an almost daily basis should qualify for press credentials at the legislature, and “almost daily” be be interpreted liberally.

Truly responsible Republicans would have voted for HB-249. That was Gov. Bullock’s pander to private insurers Medicaid expansion bill that would have covered 65,000 uninsured Montanans by fiscal 2019. Instead, they joined with their tea bagging party mates to kill HB-249 and supported SB-405, Sen. Buttrey’s bill that covers only 46,000 by fiscal 2019. Someone please tell me what’s responsible about denying health insurance to almost 20,000 people who need it.