For those who have been following events in Montana closely, there won't be much "news" in my piece, but it does have what I like to think of as the "Montana Headlines" touch, when it comes to setting the race in historical context (both recent and more remote).
For those who don't have occasion to follow Montana politics, it is a good place to start when it comes to this race.
Here is the link: Enjoy!
I really haven't been following much regarding the legislature, but I noted that I was somewhat in agreement with Sen. Jon Tester in his remarks to the Montana legislature. Not about all of that bipartisan stuff -- when Democrats say "bipartisan" they usually mean "go along with what we think." And not about his grandstanding on "Citizen's United" and all that. But this line:
Don’t focus on division and distraction.
We have already seen some goofy stuff -- the ever-reliable Jerry O'Neil wanting to be paid in gold, for instance. Or how about Sen. Jason Priest's suggestion to shrink the size of the Montana legislature? Neither thing is particularly harmful. It is just the kind of silly stuff that the Montana press loves to write about -- and why not? It makes for great theater.
Just once I'd love to see a hard-nosed Republican majority go to work on an exclusively economic, legal, and regulatory agenda made up of common-sense stuff that would be difficult to assail from the left.
We have a Democratic U.S. Senator addressing the Montana legislature saying that at the federal level, every spending program needs to be on the table -- i.e. the chopping block. Let's have a Republican legislature put that into play. Put every department and every expensive program on the table here in our state. Do some significant (but not over-the-top) trimming, and quote Sen. Tester at every turn about how everything needs to be "on the table." Let the opposition howl and be the ones to be unreasonable for a change.
Leave the controversial and divisive social issues alone for a term. Leave at home, for once, those items that amount to nothing more than picking fights or picking nits regarding battles lost long, long ago. (Yes, I'm talking about you, Rep. O'Neil.)
The truth of the matter is that if Republicans take Sen. Tester's admonition to heart and "don't focus on division and distraction," the big winner would be the Montana Republican Party. Surely Sen. Tester knows this -- which means that he is serenely confident that a sizable number of Montana GOP legislators will ignore his advice and proceed to shoot themselves and their party in the foot. I wish I didn't share his confidence...
Senator Tester is wanting to "reform" filibuster rules in the U.S. Senate, but Senator Baucus is dragging his feet, saying that he wants to see how such changes would affect rural states. Sen. Baucus is, of course, being evasive and coy and keeping his options open. After all, he already knows the answer to his question -- weakening the filibuster will weaken the influence of rural state senators.
When I was a wee lad, learning about politics from my rancher father -- a Republican, but hardly a fire-breathing conservative, much to my occasional dismay -- I learned that the one thing that gave agricultural interests a fighting chance in the national debate was the U.S. Senate, where states like Montana and South Dakota had exactly the same number of votes as New York and California. As the years went by, I learned that the rules of the Senate only magnified the power of rural state U.S. Senators. Things like "holds," "filibusters," and various and sundry procedural arcana give individual Senators incredible powers to look out for the interests of their states -- and of the nation, for those Senators who are inclined to think about their country.
Granted, those powers are negative powers, but that is exactly what the U.S. Senate was designed to be -- a forum for protecting minorities against the majority, a sort of legislative "veto" analogous to the veto power that the President wields with relation to Congress.
Senator Tester is undoubtedly bowing to his masters in championing these "reforms." He knows who paid the bills for his last election, and it wasn't Montanans or anyone particularly concerned about Montana.
It is useful to recall that when Republicans had comfortable control of the U.S. Senate during Presidency of Bush the younger -- with dreams of a permanent majority similar to the current dreams of Democrats -- there were Republicans who were making noises about doing away with the filibuster rules. Sanity prevailed and Republicans wisely stepped back from that particular abyss.
One can only hope that Democrats will remember how fleeting Senate majorities can be and will likewise step back from the abyss that is an unrestrained rule of a simple majority. It is unfortunate that Senator Tester, supposedly the "only farmer in the U.S. Senate," doesn't understand what side he is supposedly on -- the side of Montana. One hopes that Senator Baucus will follow what have to be instincts honed by many terms as a small rural state Senator, holding the line against Senator Tester's folly.
This season, there was a major blow for sanity when a judge struck down Montana's laws limiting the contributions that campaigns could receive in this state. I understand that there are a lot of people who think that the problem with campaigns today is that there is too much money and that the answer to this "problem" is to restrict the size of donations and make picky regulations that require full-time professionals to keep up with them. To which I respond: over a four year period Montana's GDP is roughly $150 billion -- is it really unreasonable to spend three or four million dollars over that same period on a campaign that decides who the governor will be? I don't think so. Montanans probably spend more than that in a single month paying their cable TV bills. Is a month's worth of reality TV really just as important as who heads up our state's executive branch? To ask the question is to answer it.
In another post back in July, I had this to say:
Outside organizations have always been able to pour money into races, and this election cycle is no exception...
Furthermore, since outside groups can’t coordinate with the candidate, the candidate has no ability to control the message -- increasingly, the truly greasy things are done by outside groups so the candidate can shrug his shoulders and say “I had nothing to do with it -- in fact, I’m not even allowed to talk to them.” There is always mud slung in campaigns, but when big money is forced into outside groups, the candidates don’t have to take responsibility for any of it.
And indeed, there has been a great illustration of this recently. Rick Hill's gubernatorial campaign accepted a $500,000 donation from the Montana Republican Party during the period of time when a judge had ruled that it was legal to do so. Another judge has subsequently (and inexplicably) prohibited Hill from spending that legal money.
Consider, however:
First, that donation leveled the playing field between Hill and Bullock when it came to money. Hill and Bullock have matched each other practically dollar for dollar when it comes to raising money here in Montana in the ridiculously low amounts required by state law. Bullock has, however, outstripped Hill when it comes to raising out-of-state money. Don't think that this is because Democrats all over the country just happen to know about Bullock and are itching to write him $630 checks right and left. Such things are organized and bundled by professional fundraisers, and the money tends to come from wealthy donors who write similar checks to Democratic candidates all over the country. Big money, in other words.
The $500,000 that Hill received came from similar sources on the Republican side, just in a different way.
Second, note that the money came from Republican Party organizations -- the Montanan Republican Party and ultimately the Republican Governor's Association. Contributions to political party organizations, I would point out, are reportable and the information is available to the public, if you care about such things. I really don't, but Democrats make a big noisy deal about how important it is, so I mention it.
I happen to be old-fashioned on the subject of political parties. As a Burkean, I think political parties play a moderating and mediating role because they have an interest in promoting consensus candidates and issues that can win elections at every level in a state -- and not just in one election cycle, but in the next, and the next... When parties can control the purse strings to a certain extent, more extreme candidates are unlikely to get as much support. As the financial power of political parties has been increasingly hamstrung by election laws, our elections have only gotten uglier and more negative.
Third (and here I reach the main point of this post), note that an identical amount -- $500,000 -- is being spent by a Jon Tester-friendly group on a sleazy campaign tactic: running ads urging voters to choose the guy they style as the "real conservative" in the U.S. Senate race in Montana -- the Libertarian Party candidate. Since every "real conservative" who is persuaded to vote Libertarian is a voter who has been peeled away from Denny Rehberg, the motivation is clear, and the tactic is cynical, to say the least.
Leaving aside the question of whether fringe libertarian candidates in Montana are actually more conservative than mainstream Republicans in Montana (in my experience they are not) "the ad is funded by the Montana Hunters and Anglers Leadership Fund, a political-action committee financed earlier this year by the League of Conservation Voters, a leading conservation and environmental group backing Tester."
Keep in mind that the Libertarian Party advocates the private ownership of wildlife, the privatization of all public lands, National Parks, etc. Add to that the fact that no-one (especially the Montana press) seems to have really done much "fact-checking" on who this Libertarian guy really is. Is he the kind of person that the folks running these ads would choose to manage Montana's wildlife and public land? Does the "Montana Hunters and Anglers Leadership Fund" seriously want public land to be privatized and wildlife to be privately owned? Please. This tactic is completely legal (although we wonder where all of that money is ultimately coming from, given Democratic preaching about "transparency" -- have they released a full list of donors and amounts?)
It is legal, but it is also completely cynical in its approach to our electoral system -- and I would predict that not a few Montanans will view it with disgust.
For the richest irony of all, Sen. Tester doesn't have to take responsibility for this slimy tactic. Not one bit. After all, he's not spending the money, and isn't allowed to coordinate with the group. (Wink, nudge.)
By contrast, the $500,000 that Rick Hill's campaign received from the Montana GOP is money that would be spent on ads ending with the words "I'm Rick Hill, and I approved this message." Would the Tester campaign take out a message urging people to vote for the Libertarian candidate and have Sen. Tester finish it off with "I'm Jon Tester, and I approved this message?" I don't think so.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm sick and tired of ads from groups of unknown origin that tell us to "Call So-and-So and tell him that he's a blithering idiot" -- since the structure of such organizations are built around issue advocacy that make attack ads the way to go. Most candidates would much rather have donations given directly to them to spend as they see fit rather than having "helpful" groups flooding the airwaves, and most big donors would probably rather give their money to a candidate they support rather than to a Super-PAC.
Again, it's all legal, and it should be. People should be able to spend their money however they want, exercising their rights of free speech. But why can't that money go directly to candidates if the donors want it to? Let them spend it, let them take responsibility for the content. That money is going to be spent one way or another in these races -- let's maximize the chances that it will be spent in a way in which candidates will be answering directly for distortions and lies in their own ads.
Rick Hill and the Republican Party are wanting to spend money and take responsibility for the content -- and a hostile judge shut them down. Meanwhile, Jon Tester and the Democrats -- or, excuse me, "independent groups" -- are spending an identical sum on a tactic that subverts a clear and straight-up choice facing Montanans in our U.S. Senate race. I suspect justice will ultimately be served, but it will be thanks to Montana voters siding with Denny Rehberg, and no thanks to certain Montana judges or our state's campaign regulation bureaucracy.
Well, while my prediction that the Billings Gazette would endorse a Democrat in the governor's race was wrong, my prediction on what would happen in the most important race in Montana this election season wasn't. It was an unsurprisingly full-throated endorsement, one that had some interesting features.
First of all, it was interesting that the same editorial board that had a lot of critical things to say about President Obama in its endorsement of Mitt Romney didn't at all address the fact that Sen. Tester has been a reliable, lockstep, vote for President Obama's policies.
Second, in its endorsement of Sen. Tester, there was this gratuitous swipe at the man the Gazette has endorsed in 5 consecutive Congressional races: "Sen. Jon Tester has accomplished more for Montana in his first term than Rep. Denny Rehberg has in twice that time." Um, maybe that is because Tester is one of 100 U.S. Senators, rather than one of 535 Congressmen? And did Sen. Tester accomplish more for Montana from 2006 to the present than did Sen. Conrad Burns, with his seniority and his seat on the Appropriations Committee, from 2000-2006? Somehow I doubt it. And yet that didn't keep the Gazette from endorsing an inexperienced challenger named Jon Tester in that race. There is a pattern here, and legislative results ain't it. You know your case is weak when you have to stoop to criticizing a Representative for not being as powerful as a Senator.
Third, there was no mention of Sen. Tester's deciding vote for Obamacare, the single most important piece of legislation that he encountered on his watch. If he did such a good job of "reaching across the aisle" and being a "moderate" as the editorial claims, one would think the editors would have to at least mention it and discuss why Sen. Tester's vote for Obamacare was representative of such qualities.
Fourth, there is not a single mention of traditional energy issues -- perhaps because Sen. Tester has been so ineffectual in persuading his own Democratic Party to adopt more moderate positions on oil, gas, and coal development. Forget working across the aisle -- Sen. Tester hasn't been able to provide leadership within his own party. This is no small matter, given that so much of Montana's reserve of energy lies under federal lands. Oil development has increased under Democratic rule, but only because it has taken place on privately owned land in North Dakota.
Fifth, there is no mention of Sen. Tester on the estate taxes that are about to take a bite out of Montana farming and ranching families, courtesy of Sen. Tester's party. This is probably because Sen. Tester's cynical introduction of a bill to prolong the Bush estate tax cuts was so, well, cynical. Please see the above reference to Sen. Tester being unable to provide leadership and exercise persuasion within his own party.
In summary, the Gazette's litany of reasons for voting for Sen. Tester seem to be little more than a list of minor pork projects and other votes that would be a no-brainer for any Montana Senator. Do the Gazette editors really believe that a Sen. Rehberg would have voted against small Montana banks, against Montana veterans, against small Montana agricultural producers, against wolf management, against saving small Montana post offices, etc.? Please.
And for a final thought: if this is the best that Sen. Tester can accomplish with his party in control of the U.S. Senate and the White House, what exactly will he get done if there is the President Mitt Romney that the Gazette editors claim to favor? What if the Republicans manage to take control of the Senate, as they have a good chance of doing? Will we see Sen. Tester "work across the aisle" and vote with Republicans to pass legislation, or will he be the same reliable Democratic vote he has been for the last 6 years, standing as part of a Democratic filibuster?
There may be valid reasons to choose to vote for Sen. Tester, but for the Gazette to cite an ability to work across the aisle as a closing argument for voting for a man who has voted 95% of the time with the most liberal Democratic President of the modern era seems disingenuous.
But then the Gazette's pattern of endorsements this season has seemed to defy reason -- and it's not just those of us on the right who think so.
But the Gazette endorsed Rick Hill, shocking me, and doubtless many others. (The headline is, of course, a joke -- but there must have been more than a few stunned Republicans staggering around on Sunday morning -- and Democrats having chest pain from sudden attacks of heartburn.)
It isn't the first time I've been wrong and won't be the last. I'm happy to be wrong in this way (just as I will be happy if it turns out that I'm wrong that Gov. Romney was always destined to be a sure general election loser -- I'm actually beginning to believe that there is an outside chance at sanity prevailing in the Presidential race.)
The Gazette endorsement was far from a tepid one. In fact it was downright enthusiastic, which made it all the more remarkable. Just as with other GOP endorsements in this electoral season, the prose doesn't read to me quite like most Gazette editorials. The Romney endorsement in particular was so unlike most Gazette editorials that I wondered aloud to the beloved over breakfast whether the publisher had written it himself rather than having one of the editors write it. But maybe it's more in how I'm reading things than in how they were written...
The cynical, tinfoil-hat-wearing gnome sitting on my left shoulder whispers in my ear that this is a sign that polling data is looking even more favorable for Hill and other Republicans in Montana than we may have thought. Are we looking at a comfortable 6 or 7 point spread for Hill in November? Let's hope so. The pocket-protector wearing gnome on my right shoulder whispers in my ear that I need to stop being paranoid and stop imagining that there are gnomes on my shoulders whispering contradictory things to me.
Anyway, I am now doubling down on my prediction that the Gazette will hold true to its Democratic convictions in the most important race of the season in Montana and endorse Sen. Tester. If I am wrong, I will happily (exuberantly, even) publish a post entitled "I WAS REALLY, REALLY WRONG," and even begin cautiously to harbor hopes that a new editorial endorsement era has arrived...
Some (but by no means all) high-profile Montana Democrats have not tended to follow that example. Gubernatorial candidate Steve Bullock has broken with his fellow Democrats on the land board on a number of occasions, voting against coal development. Senator Tester has likewise been pretty quiet about President Obama's EPA, and indeed has doubled down in defending EPA policies that other coal-state Democrats have condemned as unreasonable. As we noted before in our "between a frack and a hard place" piece, one plausible explanation for Montana Democrats being timid about going all out for coal is matter of just who is writing the checks to their campaigns.
As a Charles Johnson article noted today, Steve Bullock's lead in fundraising this cycle is completely a function of his high percentage of out-of-state donors. As always, Johnson's article is good, straight reporting. It is interesting that the Helena Independent Record's headline emphasizes Bullock's money lead, whereas the Billings Gazette headline emphasizes the fact that his lead results from out-of-state money. Given that the Gazette caused near-coronary events in Republican households across their readership area by endorsing Republican Rick Hill in Sunday's paper (is Hill poised for a more comfortable victory than we have been led to believe?), perhaps this headline is meant to give a little justification for that endorsement.
Getting back to money, Bullock's lead in fundraising demonstrates just how a dependence on out-of-state money puts Democrats in red states like Montana in a bind. Public sentiment is strongly in favor of natural resource development here in Montana -- and not just with Republicans.
And yet, when red state Democrats toe the environmentalist line insufficiently, they run the risk of losing all of that out-of-state money from liberal activists around the country who want some return on their investment.
Red state Republicans and blue state Democrats have no such conflict: any out-of-state conservative donor, for instance, will tend to have similar concerns as the average (right-of-center) Montanan on things like energy development.
Sen. Jon Tester made a bit of a splash with the help of an unsurprisingly uncritical print media, saying that his "biggest priority after re-election would be to push a bipartisan balanced budget solution that has so far languished in Congress."Just out of curiosity, I did a search of the archives of the Billings Gazette from January 1, 2007 (around the time Tester took office) until January 1, 2011 (when the Montana Democratic playbook dictates that their U.S. Senate candidates are to be transformed into sounding like conservative Republicans for the final two years of their term.) The search was for "Jon Tester balanced budget."
I did not find a single news report that detailed Sen. Tester's labors to balance the federal budget. Given that Sen. Tester votes with President Obama close to 100% of the time and given that President Obama has broken the bank with unprecedented increases of debt, this was hardly surprising. Something may have slipped past me, but one would expect that Sen. Tester's "biggest priority" would have shown up many times during those first four glorious years after taking office -- and surely from 2008 - 2010 when Democrats controlled all branches of the federal government?
It is important to note that the words "balanced budget" are today code words for "tax increases" in the Democratic lexicon, so even Sen. Tester's election year (re)conversion to the cause of fiscal austerity should be taken with a grain of salt.
The political point to note is that for years, it was only Republicans who (officially, anyway) called for a balanced federal budget -- it was Democrats who openly advocated for Keynesian deficit spending (with a devilish twist -- unlike Keynes, they have advocated for just as much deficit spending in good economic times as in bad.)
So from a political point of view, calling for a balanced budget makes a Democrat sound a bit like, well, a Republican -- especially if you don't read the find print. And sounding like a Republican in the year or two before an election is precisely what Democrats running for the U.S. Senate in Montana specialize in.
We'll see if Montana voters buy into Sen. Tester's game this election. They've bought into it from Sen. Baucus for decades, so Sen. Tester is hardly foolish to give it a whirl.
In an interesting op-ed in the Kalispell Daily Interlake, the editors take a cane to Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer for his expressing sympathy for the fate of Ron Smith, on death row for the murder of two young Native American men in 1982. According to the editorial, the governor may use his power as governor in these waning months of his administration to reduce Smith’s penalty to life in prison (Smith originally sought the death penalty for himself but has subsequently had second thoughts.)
The editors conclude:
The governor was quoted as saying in the Associated Press story last week that he keeps “coming back to this question of what is fair” and said “I don’t know what is fair.”
If that is really true, then the governor isn’t in any position to make a judgment of this importance. And if he finally does come to realize what is fair, then Ron Smith will have to accept his fate at the executioner’s hand just the way he forced Thomas Running Rabbit Jr. and Harvey Mad Man Jr. to accept theirs.
They have a compelling point -- by any reasonable standard, someone who willfully deprives another of his life has forfeited any right to his own. The state may choose not to deprive him of it, but he can’t claim to have a “right” to live. Pretty much the entirety of the human experience would seem to agree with this viewpoint. The Christian tradition in the West introduced concepts of mercy and forgiveness to what had been a much harsher punitive landscape, but it has always acknowledged the right of civil authority to use the death penalty, even while it has urged restraint in its use.
As I wrote some years ago, I personally oppose the death penalty for a number of reasons, but in keeping with that Christian tradition, I also believe strongly that the civil authority is not acting immorally when it decides that it is necessary. Most importantly, the power of pardon should not be used to keep the death penalty from being implemented -- if you want to remove the death penalty from the list of punishments available to Montana’s juries and judges, use the legislative process, not a stroke of a governor's pen.
The right of kings to grant pardons and to commute sentences is as old as civil society. It is a part of that set of Burkean “prescriptions and prejudices” -- i.e. traditions that have developed over centuries to meet a society’s needs. That royal privilege of granting pardons has carried through into Anglo-American traditions of common law and constitutional law, and is exercised by our heads of state -- the President and the 50 state governors.
While we might disagree with particular pardons by presidents and governors, it is an important safety valve for any humane society to have one man (I use the word in its inclusive sense) holding the power to correct miscarriages of justice that slip through our system of laws and courts -- a system that is the best the world has seen and yet is imperfect because we humans are imperfect.
Was there a miscarriage of justice in this particular case? That is the question the governor must ask himself after examining all of the evidence. How Governor Schweitzer exercises the royal privilege he holds lies on his conscience, and his alone.
* * * * *
And now for taxes -- specifically death taxes. We read that Senator Jon Tester has belatedly co-sponsored a stand-alone bill to exempt farmers and ranchers from the massive increase in estate taxes that will kick in once he and Senator Baucus and the rest of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate allow the Bush tax cuts to expire.
We will leave aside discussion of an obvious question: why should a family farm or ranch be protected from having the state confiscate its assets upon the owner’s death, while other kinds of family businesses are beneath Sen. Tester’s notice?
Moving on, though, this is of course a naked act of self-preservation by Sen. Tester in a rural state like Montana. It might even seem laudable, but really, it doesn’t reflect well on Tester at all.
Montana Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Hanson nailed the issue on the head when he said the following:
"I hope it passes because it’s what needs to be done,” Hanson said. “But if it needs to be done, why wasn’t it in the first bill?"
Indeed. It isn’t like it was some state secret that President Obama intended to let the Bush tax cuts expire, and that Montana farmers and ranchers would find their land in jeopardy as a result. As a U.S. Senator from a rural state (and one who trumpets his farming credentials far and wide, no less), Tester should have been all over this from the start -- which was four years ago, when Obama was elected President. We’re only hearing about this now?
By all rights, as a self-proclaimed advocate for agriculture and “the only farmer in the U.S. Senate," Tester should have been providing leadership, both working behind the scenes and publicly using his bully pulpit, to make sure it would never come to this point -- where at the 11th hour, a quick-fix stand-alone bill has to be rushed into consideration to keep farmers and ranchers from having their family land devastated by confiscatory estate taxes.
It’s only been 6 years, but it seems that Sen. Tester has already been in Washington too long.
Actually, it isn’t just detractors who call it that. None other than President Obama’s key advisor David Axelrod had this to say recently:
David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, sent out an email saying: "I like Obamacare. I'm proud of it -- and you should be, too. Here's why: Because it works. So if you're with me, say it: 'I like Obamacare.’”
The way I see it, if David Axelrod can call it Obamacare, so can “detractors.”
Like it or not, “Obamacare” has entered the political lexicon permanently, and no amount of revisionism is going to be able to get rid of it. Given what a budget-buster it will be if fully enacted, calling it the official name of the “Affordable Care Act” deserves scare quotes more than does Obamacare.
Dennison is to be commended, however, for discussing, later in the piece, Republican Congressional proposals for health care reform that Rehberg supports -- it isn’t just about saying “no.” All of this may be moot, however. The fact is that Obamacare is one of the most sweeping and expensive pieces of legislation in decades. It is deeply unpopular in Montana, and Tester voted for it anyway. Had he bucked the President and voted with his constituents rather than with his party on this issue, there is a good chance that he would be coasting to re-election rather than fighting for his political life.
* * * * *
Unsurprisingly, AG Steve Bullock has a big lead in funds on hand compared to former Congressman Rick Hill. Hill had a bruising 7-way primary and took some sharp hits from his fellow Republican candidates along the way -- it costs money to win contested primaries. Charles Johnson, in his piece on the subject, predicts that Hill will make up a lot of that ground -- the question is not where things stand now, but what will happen with fundraising from here on out.
The most depressing part of the article is the statement that both Hill and Bullock are probably spending 96% of their time on fundraising. Based on what I have seen of statewide races in Montana, especially for governor, this is spot-on. Needing to raise more than $1 million in increments no larger than $500, candidates for governor literally spend months on end doing nothing but being personally on the phone, asking for donations. Yes, they speak at party gatherings and what-not, but these are mere interruptions in their primary job, which is to be glorified telemarketers. I ask you, is this any way to elect our statewide officials? If contribution limits were to be brought into the 21st century (or better yet, eliminated altogether), candidates could actually spend more of their time actually campaigning -- talking to Montana voters, studying the issues, and preparing policy statements.
Contribution limits are supposed to keep large contributors from “buying” elective office for their candidates of choice, but what average person has the time to live on the phone for months on end, asking for contributions? Increasingly, elective office all across the country is becoming the realm of the wealthy, who can afford to have their working lives stop for a year or more while they fundraise and campaign (mostly the former), and in many cases the truly wealthy can underwrite much of their own campaigns.
Outside organizations have always been able to pour money into races, and this election cycle is no exception, but in general these organizations will only invest money when the candidate has proven an ability to raise money himself. Furthermore, since outside groups can’t coordinate with the candidate, the candidate has no ability to control the message -- increasingly, the truly greasy things are done by outside groups so the candidate can shrug his shoulders and say “I had nothing to do with it -- in fact, I’m not even allowed to talk to them.” There is always mud slung in campaigns, but when big money is forced into outside groups, the candidates don’t have to take responsibility for any of it.
The first appears to be the account of another local success story in the making. Jan Falstad provides another fine article in the Billings Gazette on Bakken-related business development, this time telling the story of two Montana brothers, Sivert and Richard Mysse, who put their farm-boy know-how to work in developing a new truck for heating fracking fluid. After noticing how many trucks were needed to heat water at a fracking site in the Bakken oil fields, they got the idea of constructing an innovative truck that they say is "twice as big, one-third more efficient, and safer than the competition," according to Falstad’s report. By heating the water for fracking, fewer chemicals are needed, and the entire process is more efficient. The brothers sold some ranch land near Ingomar and used other “creative financing” to build the $2 million truck, and they are now marketing their services in the Bakken.
Whether their enterprise will be a financial windfall for the brothers remains to be seen, but this is the kind of entrepreneurial spirit -- seeing a need and coming up with an innovative way to meet it -- that is inspiring. We suspect that given the demand for services of every kind in the Bakken, they will indeed be successful. Small businesses like this are the lifeblood of a healthy economy. Concerns that employ a half-dozen people here and there add up quickly.
Meanwhile, we have a guest editorial in the Helena Independent-Record decrying the fact that the Montana Land Board voted 3-2 in 2010 to take another step toward finally developing the Otter Creek coal reserves. The lead author of the op-ed is Montana writer Phil Condon, and he was joined by 3 other Montana authors (including William Kittredge,) actress Margot Kidder, and the chair of a Livingston-based liberal women’s activist group.
The authors criticize Gov. Brian Schweitzer, Sec. State McCulloch, and State Auditor Monica Lindeen for “siding with Big Coal.” They state that Attorney General (and Democratic nominee for governor) Steve Bullock and Secretary of Public Instruction (sic) Denise Juneau oppose the permits, which indicates that there will be a change of attitude in the state house if Bullock is elected governor. While we have been critical of what has seemed like 8 years of foot-dragging on the part of Gov. Schweitzer, at least his rhetoric has often been there, favoring coal development of one sort or another. And in this case, his vote seems to be there as well.
I’m not familiar with most of the authors of this editorial, but have enjoyed a couple of William Kittredge’s books (even while failing to share some of his cynical attitudes toward the West in which he grew up.) As public intellectuals, their voice has a certain influence in Montana and they deserve to be heard out, as do all who express their opinions thoughtfully.
In my recent American Spectator piece, I made the observation that many Montanans of a certain bent seem determined to be stuck in the past (hard to believe that I as a pretty old-fashioned conservative am even writing that,) noting that AG Steve Bullock’s arguments in the Citizens United case seem appropriate for 1912, but not really for 2012. The Copper Kings are long dead and they aren’t coming back -- the alphabet soup reasons (EPA, OSHA, DEQ...) why the landscape has dramatically and permanently changed when it comes to “Big Mining” of any sort are well-known to everyone. And yet, predictably, the Condin piece leads off with the “Copper Kings.” Pretending not to know how irrelevant this argument is in 2012 amounts to an inexcusable rhetorical mendacity on the part of skilled and experienced writers who know exactly what they are doing with their words.
The authors’ concerns about contaminating water supplies used by ranchers find great sympathy here at MH. What one would rather see, however, is an attitude that seeks both to strictly protect water supplies while also encouraging mining and development. Instead, the real argument is found deeper into the piece -- coal mining’s purported effect on global warming. Take away the global warming argument, and the pressures to find a “win-win” situation are inescapable. Include it, and any rhetorical weapons -- relevant or not -- are justified in the fight to save the planet, whatever the cost to individuals or to local economies. The intended audience of this article really consists of just three people, just as many of those ranting articles in the media leading up to the Obamacare decision were really only being written for one reader. In the latter case, the pieces were being written for Chief Justice John Roberts. In the former, the piece is being written for the three Democrats who are perceived as favorable to proceeding with the coal leases -- only one would need to flip a vote to stop the development cold in its tracks. But the calculus is more complicated than that for Montana Democratic politicians.
Which brings us to the third article -- a Washington Post piece that centers on Montana’s Democratic Senators, Jon Tester and Max Baucus, and their support for the Keystone XL pipeline. Sen. Baucus has, according to this report, been particularly open to lobbying for the pipeline. Sen. Tester has been supportive but seems more muted. The financial politics of Senate races play a significant role here, one would think. Baucus, with his role as head of the powerful Finance Committee, has an endless stream of people and entities in the financial sector who are lining up to line his campaign's pockets. Baucus doesn’t have to worry about money -- he just needs to worry about votes, should Montanans (who overwhelmingly support the Keystone XL pipeline) decide they care more about energy development than about what Baucus’s seniority can do for the state.
Sen. Tester, on the other hand, is heavily dependent on the sort of bicoastal left-leaning fundraising that gave him an edge when he took on then Sen. Conrad Burns. At the same time, he also needs those votes. So Sen. Tester seems to be trying to navigate the shoals carefully -- give enough support to the Keystone pipeline to satisfy Montana voters, while being quiet enough about it so as not to dry up his out-of-state funding sources. Whether out-of-state fundraising is playing a role in AG Bullock’s decision not to support Otter Creek is an interesting question for which there is not, as yet, an obvious answer.
One thing would seem likely -- entrepreneurs like the Mysee brothers and their employees will likely cast their votes for those who at the very least are not hostile and obstructive when it comes to traditional energy development -- while Condin, Kittredge, Kidder, et al. could play havoc with Democrats’ ability to raise money from liberal sources should they continue to push the issue.
As the title above says, Montana Democratic politicians in high-dollar races are indeed between a frack and a hard place.
Update: Read this piece at "The Fix" at the Washington Post, in which Sen. Tester is prominently featured. It seems that Sen. Tester is quite aware of the unpopularity of his vote for Obamacare and is trying carefully to thread the needle.________
It's Wednesday, and time for a little Montana politics to celebrate Independence Day.
There is a lot to dislike about the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare, and since this is a blog that sticks to Montana politics, the urge to wax overly eloquent will be resisted. A couple of things stand out, however:
First, one is liable to get whiplash from following liberal opinion about the Supreme Court. Prior to the ruling, the left was preparing to discount the very legitimacy of the Court -- thinking it was going to rule against the constitutionality of Obamacare. Now, they are back to having the Supreme Court as bosom buddies, and the once-hated Chief Justice Roberts is now an exceedingly wise rock star -- Confucius meets Bono. Go figure.
On a related point, one notices that the left is accusing the right of being whiners and crybabies. Some expressions of outrage have perhaps been unseemly, but how would the left be acting right now had Roberts voted the other way? We got a pretty good preview from the full-court press bombarding the Court from Democrats and the mainstream media prior to the decision. Chief Justice Roberts was about to experience his own high-tech lynching had he decided otherwise, and he knew it.
But really, that isn't the proper analogy, is it? No, the proper analogy would be this: imagine that Justice Roberts voted exactly as he did, but that Justice Sotomayor had a last-minute change of heart, voting with Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy.
That's the real analogy. Think about it -- has there ever been a single major case in which a justice appointed by a Democratic President has broken ranks and cast a deciding vote with a conservative bloc on a hot-button issue? Once? Ever? I’ve been Court-watching for decades and can't think of an example. Were it ever to happen, the wrath from the left against that traitorous Justice would make current conservative hand-wringing pale by comparison. For if there is one thing we know, it is this: Republican-appointed Justices break ranks, evolve, whatever... Democratic appointees never do. Democrats know exactly what they are getting in their Supreme Court picks -- Republicans just have to hope.
George Will , Charles Krauthammer, et al, are wrong that Chief Justice Roberts somehow slyly stole a march on the left by voting as he did (you know, limiting the commerce clause, giving the political fervor to Romney rather than Obama, neutralizing liberal claims of a politicized court, gaining cover for future groundbreaking decisions, yada, yada...) One can't blame them for looking for a silver lining, but it is a joke to consider this as anything but a disaster for traditional conceptions of what the Constitution is supposed to do -- namely to limit the power and reach of the federal government. Roberts has instead given the federal government a roadmap for doing basically anything it wants to do -- just incorporate a tax into anything you want to do, and you'll have his vote and that of the 4 liberal Justices. (Unless he plans to go into even greater contortions next time to undo his thinking.)
Let's be generous to Chief Justice Roberts and assume that he is playing at a high-level chess game, of which this move is 6 steps ahead on a long-term strategy. If so, Roberts is trying to be too clever by half, and it won't work. Leaving aside the fact that his legal contortions are underwhelming, he is forgetting the real point to being a Supreme Court Justice: to protect and defend the Constitution. He didn't do that, and let's not pretend that he did, even if we can come up with some theoretical short-term advantages to be gained from all of this.
The true silver lining, such as it is, is this (and here, we return at long last to Montana politics): the Supreme Court didn't mandate Obamacare. Hence this decision in no way ranks with the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time -- this ruling doesn't create law out of whole cloth in the manner of many earlier Court decisions, but rather allowed a law passed by Congress and signed by the President to stand.
Which means that the law can be (and must be) repealed and/or gutted by the same democratic process. Chief Justice Roberts said, in effect, "you elected these jokers, you get to clean up the mess or live with the consequences." For Montanans, that means a number of things:
1. Montana needs to do its part in retaking control of the U.S. Senate, firing Sen. Tester, who voted for this monstrosity and would be a reliable vote to uphold it. He would be a vote against conservative judges and justices or for liberal ones (depending on the outcome of the Presidential election.) There are a number of paths to taking control of the Senate, but most involve Congressman Rehberg winning this race. We just need to get it done.
2. We need to elect Steve Daines as Montana's U.S. Congresman. While control of the House is not in immediate jeopardy, every hand is needed on deck to keep the GOP majority a comfortable one with plenty of breathing room. He will vote to repeal Obamacare, and his opponent would vote to keep it.
3. We need to elect Rick Hill as governor. States will have some discretion in implementing provisions of Obamacare, and we need someone who will stand strong with a conservative Republican legislature. We know from the fact that AG Steve Bullock refused to participate in the lawsuit against Obamacare that he supports it. We just don't need any more of that in the governor's office.
4. We need to elect Tim Fox as Montana Attorney General. Republicans and conservative-leaning independents in this state have for too long had a tendency to treat the AG office as a "gimme" for the Democrats, who always want it more badly than we do. There may not be more lawsuits challenging this or that aspect of Obamacare (and other items of federal overreach,) but if they do happen, I want Montana's AG being a part of it. (Living mentally in the 19th century and pretending that the Copper Kings are still running Montana doesn't count.)
In short, we just have to win this fall, here in Montana and all across the country. Elections have consequences.
Today, we leave the Bakken play in North Dakota and eastern Montana and head west to Butte, at the other end of the state. 
A Montana Tech grad, Ryan Lance, is the new CEO of ConocoPhillips, a huge multi-national corporation with "18,000 employees, more than $200 billion in annual revenue, and billions of gallons of fossil fuel production from 19 countries in the farthest corners of the world," according to an article in the Butte Montana Standard.
Butte and Montana Tech are justly proud of having a graduate reach one of the pinnacles in the oil industry. It is the sort of thing that attracts top-notch students who are serious about careers in the mining, oil, and gas industries. As well as having been instrumental in raising millions of dollars for Montana Tech, Mr. Lance's success has an impact on students and prospective students:
I think it does a lot for the confidence level of our petroleum engineers,” said (the head of the Montana Tech Foundation.) “They can look at him and say "I’m going to this small college in southwest Montana, but here is where I can go."
When a native son makes good at the highest levels, it only makes sense at least to listen to what he has to say.
For instance, this:
(Lance stated that) regulatory approval and construction of the Keystone XL pipeline would be a boon for oil production in the U.S. as well as the national economy.
“It just helps everybody when you can get cheaper energy and more jobs,” he said.
While Montana's Democratic Senators, to their credit, did vote for the construction of the pipeline, their leadership was lacking, being unable to corral the 4 additional Democratic votes that would have been necessary to move the project forward. The bottom line is that this was a "free" vote for Sens. Tester and Baucus -- they get credit for voting for the project, but can plead expediency with their liberal out-of-state donors, arguing that no harm was done since it wasn't going to pass anyway. Would they have been willing to be the 59th and 60th vote? We'll never know. Additionally, Senator Tester, in what was probably a sop to his liberal donors and constituents, has called for a ban on allowing oil from the pipeline to be sold outside the U.S.
Come again? Apparently, Sen. Tester doesn't understand that when a pipeline is being built with private funds, carrying oil that has been drilled and pumped from the ground at private expense, oil companies should be allowed to sell their oil wherever they can get the best price for it.
It is a particularly cheeky proposal from Tester, given that the oil in question is (at present) all Canadian oil. So Tester expects Canadians to sell their oil to the U.S. at prices that by definition would not be subject to worldwide market forces? Disgraceful. Sen. Tester needs a refresher course in how free enterprise (and respect for one's neighbors) works.
But back to the high achiever of the hour -- Mr. Lance. He has modeled just how one gets a chance of moving up in the world, having shown a willingness to take on any assignment during his career -- the more challenging the better. And he has never forgotten his roots. What's not to like? We wish him well in his new position.
Now if we could just get Montana's oil industry in the Bakken and elsewhere humming, so we could have more jobs for Montana Tech grads -- jobs that don't involve having to leave Montana, that is.
Sen. John Tester recently waxed eloquent to the editorial board of the Billings Gazette about the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and its role in the MF Global scandal. MF Global went bust, losing $1.6 billion of OPM (other people’s money,) including money owed to a lot of Montana farmers and ranchers, who are understandably not amused.
Sen. Tester, who is up for re-election this year, was quick to demand that heads roll at the CFTC:
“CFTC was asleep at the switch. They were in the building when all that stuff went on, too. Maybe Gary Gensler needs to go,” Tester said.
He also had instructions for law enforcement officials:
“From what I know about the issue, it’s pretty straight-forward. People need to go to jail over it,” Tester said.
The Gazette article not only faithfully reported Tester’s professed outrage, it even copied his verbage -- verbatim -- later in the story: "Gensler has been accused of being asleep at the switch while accounts that should have been regulated were drained by MF Global.” What? Experienced journalists can’t think of a new metaphor for “asleep at the switch?” Not even “asleep at the wheel,” or “sleeping on the job,” or something? And as a question for Sen. Tester, is the switch that the CFTC was asleep at really “in the building?” Isn’t this a railroad metaphor?
Yes, yes, we are being nit-picky, churlish even, especially since Tom Lutey is a good reporter. But our sniping is in the service of a greater cause. While we might not be surprised at Sen. Tester mixing metaphors, it is more than a little embarrassing that the Gazette simply regurgitated Tester’s points and language without asking any deeper questions. For that, we need the Wall Street Journal, which pointed out some inconvenient truths regarding Sen. Tester’s rhetoric, starting with the fact that Sen Tester supported and voted for the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill:
...Dodd-Frank vastly expanded the power of the CFTC. Lawmakers gave Mr. Gensler virtually everything he asked for and, according to Capitol Hill staff, even allowed the CFTC chairman to help write key provisions of the bill.
We would point out that those were Democratic lawmakers who passed Dodd-Frank on a nearly party-line vote in 2010 (two moderate Republicans from New England states voted for it.)
The WSJ article quite rightly points out (obliquely) that this futures trading scandal could raise the same issues about Sen. Tester -- i.e. was he “asleep at the switch,” and does he “need to go,” given that he and his party created the monster?
Indeed. It gets a bit old to have Montana’s Democratic Senators toeing the line set by guys like Sen. Dodd of Connecticut and Rep. Frank of Massachusetts for 4-5 years, only to have them busily obfuscate their records come election season in Montana. It gets even older to have our Montana press not asking hard questions, leaving it to a paper from New York City to point out the obvious. It’s not like Sen. Tester’s vote on Dodd-Frank was a state secret.
Actually, take a look at that last link again -- really, do... Maybe the Gazette wishes that particular column were a state secret. The 2010 Gazette description of Dodd-Frank has to be one of the longest and most overwrought descriptions of a bill in a “roll call” column we have ever seen in that paper. In fact, it reads like a Democratic Party press release, truth to be told. This was supposed to be objective “hard news?” We will only quote one passage -- again, go to the link for the full Gazette “news report” on Dodd-Frank:
Voting 60 for and 39 against, the Senate on July 15 sent President Obama a bill (HR4173) to enact strict financial regulations and consumer protections intended to improve the odds against further catastrophic breakdowns of the U.S. economy. Reversing decades of financial deregulation in Washington,... the bill addresses many of the reckless or illegal business practices and hands-off governmental policies that led to the investment-bank failures, taxpayer bailouts, savings evaporations, mortgage foreclosures, retirement cancellations and persistently high unemployment that define the ongoing Great Recession...
(Final question: has the recent financial crisis really been officially termed the “Great Recession,” with capitalization and everything, in the official newspaper stylebooks? Jus’ askin’...)
Specifically, he was headlined today in the Politico's "Shenanigans" column by Anne Schroeder Mullins. Apparently he was in such a hurry to get his Thanksgiving turkey, that he committed the faux pas of cutting in line in front of all the waiting hungry diners at a Senate restaurant buffet:
Meanwhile, freshman Sen. Jon Tester (D) walks in. He’s hard to miss — he’s huge, for one, and, two, buzz cuts don’t often go unnoticed these days. This being his first year and all, the farmer from Montana failed to recognize the hordes of people waiting in line and cut right in. Tsk, tsk.
“It was pretty bad, but no one said anything; they just rolled their eyes,” explained our spy, now aggrieved.
“For a man of the people who bragged that he was just a simple farmer, he was pretty quick to pull the ‘senator’ card and cut in line to get his food before everyone else,” our little eagle eye said. “And it is not like there was a vote or anything.”
As we approach the 1 year anniversary of Montana Headlines, it is perhaps appropriate that we have the privilege of commenting on a tidbit like this.
We predicted on our first day of operation that while the much-maligned Conrad Burns got a lot of eye-rolling and tsk-tsk-ing press for every social misstep that "embarrassed Montana," we anticipated that a good face would be put on things that would have been shocking had Burns done them.
It's amazing how much more sophisticated one is considered to be if one shares the correct politics of the smart set.
And we recall an early example of just that.
But we're probably wrong -- look for for this troubling "Gobble-gobble-gate" episode to be dissected on Montana's editorial pages by editors deeply concerned about Montana's image in D.C.
At least we assume that this was the location, since Mr. Jacobs lives in Beverly Hills -- perhaps Mr. Jacobs also has a home in the Virgin Islands for tax shelter purposes. (Yes, that was gratuitous, but it is simply too gratifying to talk about Democrats and their use of or defense of tax shelters for their super-wealthy -- hard not to find an excuse to work it in.)
Anyway, Firedoglake linked to the MH post commenting on the votes Sen. Baucus and Tester cast against the confirmation of Judge Leslie Southwick.
The blog uses the MH post as evidence for crediting Sen. Tester with being a "good influence" on Sen. Baucus. But of course as we have extensively documented and discussed, while on occasion Sen. Baucus casts a vote in the general vicinity of the center-right, he doesn't particularly need any liberal/progressive influences when it comes to voting against conservative judicial nominees.
But we digress.
Getting back to the Tester PAC fundraiser, we checked Sen. Tester's schedule for the day. It just says "No Public Events" for November 10. And for the prior day, it simply says "Begin travel" at the end of the day's schedule.
Attentive readers will note that the schedule is otherwise peppered with "Begin travel to Washington, D.C." or "Begin travel to (insert name of town), MT."
Of course, there's nothing on November 9 that says, "Begin travel to Beverly Hills."
Those who laud Sen. Tester for his transparency justify the adulation at least in part by pointing out that when we know who a public official is meeting with, we can know whether they're being unduly influenced by money and what-not.
So why wouldn't Sen. Tester put his fundraisers on the schedule -- letting us know where he is traveling to raise money and who he is meeting with? After all, don't we want to "follow the money" when it comes to transparency? Or are U.S. Senators only unduly influenced by meetings that happen in their official Senate offices?
Might other meetings happen that twist a Senator's arm to vote in a certain way if he wants to get certain campaign contributions? Ones that aren't on the official schedule? Seems as though we've had this discussion before here on MH.
From the Firedoglake post, it is pretty clear that while the folks at that soirée were still pleased with having a Montana Senator of their very own (it's the new status symbol,) they were hammering Sen. Tester pretty hard when they didn't think he was toeing the line adequately, or when he wasn't doing enough to influence the votes of wayward (from their perspective) Senate Democrats.
At one point, the reader is almost led to feel sorry for Sen. Tester after he gets grilled on Senate votes that could have indirectly forced troop withdrawals from Iraq. An observer who was present said afterwards that Tester "looked forlorn" following one exchange.
Yes, Sen. Tester, these out-of-state progressives who pumped money into your campaign (and to whom you are still holding out your hat) do indeed expect to get their money's worth. Get used to "looking forlorn" when you go asking for cash when you haven't voted properly.
