The difference between "Possible" and "Convenient."

While he was busy telling us that the loss of Senator Conrad Burns seat on the Senate Appropriations Committee wouldn't hurt Montana, Senator Harry Reid promised Montanans that if they sent Jon Tester to the Senate, Jon Tester would get a seat on the Appropriations Committee "as soon as possible."

One year later, no approps seat for Tester. Is anyone surprised?

Just like Max Baucus and his promise never to vote for gun control, you cannot trust a democrat when they tell you they're going to do something right for Montana.

It has been "possible" for Reid to give Tester a seat on the appropriations committee for some time now and he has not done so. When Tester is running for re-election (in all likelihood STILL without a seat on the appropriations committee, I hope Montanans will not take the word of national Democrats who come here to campaign for him and tell us what a difference he'll make. We've been down that road before.

$85 million in tax rebates so far.

Or in other words, 8.5 percent of the amount Montanans were overcharged has been returned.

Governor Schweitzer believes this to be a sign of his goodness.

I believe it to be a sign that we wuz robbed!

"...by the time Schweitz-head and the Dem machine get done with [Roy Brown], he will be a victim of character assassination and smear campaigns..." -- Forty Seven, October 30, 2007

“When it comes to fiscal responsibility, ‘Red Ink Roy’ doesn’t have a leg to stand on,” -- Montana Democrat Party chair Dennis McDonald

Not even formally announced, and the Democrat party is slinging mud.

Let's gripe about the Helena IR's editorial about Roy Brown today.

In an annoying piece, the IR finishes with this extra-annoying conclusion:

"That history, coupled with enough ideological differences to spice up the campaign for the party faithful on both sides, should make for a real test of just how red-colored Montana still is in 2008."

How can this possibly be true? Even by their own description, the race is between a Republican with "strongly conservative views" and a "moderate" Democrat. To test how red or blue the state is, wouldn't you want candidates of equal partisan polarization? Never mind the question of the incredible weight of Schweitzer's Hollywood money, his undisputed skills at snake-oil salesmanship, and all the advantages of incumbency during a strong economy (unearned by Schweitzer).

Even if Schweitzer gets 85% of the vote, it will prove almost nothing about how red or blue Montana is. It will just prove that conventional politics works.

Roy Brown for Governor

Senator Roy Brown (R-Billings) Will be a (the?) Republican candidate for Governor. What do we as Republicans think of this?

1) He's a fiscal conservative. That matters. In the last legislative session, our current Governor blew a billion dollar surplus on spending and government without providing permanent property tax relief. Roy would have done it differently. He was among the architects of the Republican plan to reduce property taxes permanently, instead of providing a one-shot check in the mail that's gone by the next week, let alone the next year.

2) He's a man of courage. I can say this without question because, by the time Schweitz-head and the Dem machine get done with him, he will be a victim of character assassination and smear campaigns that will leave his reputation tarnished at best. He knows this in advance, and he steps up to face it willingly. That makes him a brave man, and that makes him an improvement on our current governor.

3) Roy is a gentleman of the old school -- gracious to foes, trusty to friends, quiet in his accomplishments, humble in his demeanor. Again, an improvement on our current governor in every respect.

4) He took the hardest campaign Schweitzer could throw against him and won. In the 2006 cycle, Schweitz-head threw thousands of dollars at him and even walked door to door against him, trying to keep Roy Brown out of the Senate. Schweitzer failed and Roy Brown won.

Good luck and Godspeed, Roy Brown.

One has to love this headline from the Gazette:

Lawyers seek money for dam work

Those dam lawyers always want dam money for their dam work.

But it brings up a serious point: The state goes out to sue power companies so they will have to pay rent on the underwater land occupied by their dams. The results is that we -- yes, you and I -- can pay higher power bills. That's right. You think the state is just getting free money form the power companies? Think again. The state is getting free money from you and me. That rent the dam owners pay will be passed directly and unreservedly through to you and me. No question, no debate. The extra money McGrath is getting for the school trust will come from us.

In other words, this is a tax, imposed by the Attorney General and the court with no input from the legislature.


And of course, a few extra lawyers are going to collect fees from the whole business. What a surprise. Let's see... to which candidate for Attorney General do you suppose those lawyers gave in 2004? Oh wait, there was only one! Mike McGrath!

Now I'm too lazy to look up whether or not they actually gave. But I suspect that they gave to McGrath.

That means McGrath imposed a tax on us so that some campaign contributors could collect more money. I call that corrupt and bad government.

Mail Ballots

First Missoula mailed out 11,000 ballots to people who weren't at the address they registered at. Fully a quarter of the ballots. Then Missoula mailed people ballots for the wrong races. And the supposedly unforwardable ballots? I have a friend who got one forwarded to her. Seriously, we're supposed to risk our statewide elections on this? I don't think so.

GOP candidates clobbering Dem candidates in fundraising

Now, the Dems have made a big deal out of Max Baucus and Brian Schweitzer's big fundraising numbers. Well they might. Like it or not, money plays a huge role in who gets elected, and right now those two characters are in the catbird seat.

But here's a story you might not have heard.

Except for Mike Lange, every Republican who's running against a Democrat is raising more money.

Denny Rehberg vs. Bill Kennedy: $484,572 to $107,307 overall, and $205,721 to $63,742 this quarter.

Duane Grimes vs. Monica Lindeen for State Auditor: Lindeen, the Democrat, has $34,841 overall, which would put her in the lead. But Duane Grimes -- not announced, but raising money as a Republican challenger -- raised $19,954 this quarter, far outstripping the $11,549 Lindeen raised this quarter.

Brad Johnson vs. Linda McCulloch for Secretary of State: Johnson, the Republican incumbent, has raised $41,779 overall and $22,592 this quarter. Linda McCulloch, the Dem challenger and sitting Superintendent of Public Instruction, could only raise $13,435 this quarter, and $10,000 of that was a personal loan. Since she didn't get started until this quarter, the remaining $3,435 is all McCulloch has been able to raise in actual donations so far. Plus, she just lost a key political staffer. Looks like Dem insiders know which way the wind is blowing for this race.

Attorney General: It's true that the Dem candidates have raised more money here -- a Lot of it -- but this is not what I meant by every Republican who's running against a Democrat. Right now, Tim Fox is running against Lee Bruner for the Republican nomination, and numerous Democrats are running against each other for their own party's nomination.

OPI: Repubicans have no candidate here. But if they did, it's a safe bet that candidate wouldn't have taken $16,000 in illegal contributions. Which one of the leading Democrats did.

Oldies but goodies: Montana Main Street has an excellent explanation of why the 2003 redistricting plan was biased.

The Dems and the press (but I'm being redundant) like to talk about how the redistricting plan is fair because, hey, there are a lot of competitive seats. But if more folks want Republicans in the legislature than Democrat, wouldn't the whole democracy thing seem to suggest that more Republicans should BE in the legislature? Majority rule, right?

Not if you take most of the Republicans and only let them vote for a few legislative candidates, and then take lots of democrats and spread them out so they can vote for lots of legislative candidates.

How did they round the Republicans up and spread the democrats out? Did they make them move? No, they just made up districts where more Republicans got to vote for fewer candidates, and more Democrats got to vote for more candidates.

They drew lines on a map. Lines that kept Republicans from getting to vote against candidates the dems wanted to see win.

That ain't fair, folks. And honest dems know it ain't fair.

Once again, Scheister's public image lives in a different reality than his actual actions. This time, it's campaign funds. The guy runs around acting like he's a man of the people, and in reality it's rich out of staters who want the most to keep him in office.

Still, no one is pointing out the conflict between the Governor's public language about lobbyists and his campaign's eagerness to roll around in their cash like a dog in a pile of.... BS.

Yeah, right. But it's the REPUBLICANS who have a culture of corruption.

While the Democrats let their top management position sit vacant, the Republican party is bringing in staff left and right... OK, well, right and right.

No one is going to say that the disarray at Dem HQ since Jim Farrell flew the coop proves their party is collapsing. They still hold a lot of the high cards in the current political deck.

But the clear evidence of activity on the GOP side, balanced against the lack of an ED on the left, is pretty good evidence that new Chairman Erik Iverson has his hand firmly on the tiller of the ship.

On one side of the aisle: confident leadership executing a plan to return to the top of the game. On the other side? Hard to say, but the Farrell situation hints at the possibility of growing fat, dumb and happy.

Max Baucus and his pollution credits won't get very far with the enviros.

So says PC World Magazine. Environmentalists don't buy the carbon offset argument. They say it's not enough to take carbon back out of the atmosphere for every bit you put in. (I bet that's especially true for things like investing in wind farms, which don't even remove carbon from the atmosphere).

No no, say the environmentalists. Don't plant trees. Just stop driving, stop flying, stop using electricity unless it comes from wind (but don't build the wind farm next to a pretty view).

Proof after proof after proof. Enviros don't love the earth. They just hate modern society.

A slew of (belated) editorials came out today on the Glasgow wind farm that got killed -- or at least dramatically scaled back -- by environmentalists.

Here's the Daily Inter Lake telling the truth -- Democrats talk energy independence, but the very environmental groups who block energy independence at every turn almost always support Democrats.

Here's the Billings Gazette saying, "The wind farm might have worked, except it needed more government and deregulation messed everything up."


And here's the Wilderness Society saying, "No, no, really, we support wind energy. Really! Just not this farm, not this place, not this time."


I'll just clue you folks in in case you don't already know. The Wilderness Society will say the same thing about the next wind farm. And the next. And the next. And the next. Until people stop trying to build them in Montana. Because they DON'T support energy independence. They don't support energy at all.

And as for the Gazette's idea? Yeah. Sure. What the wind farm needed was MORE government involvement. That's all every private industrial project needs, right? Just get the govt to take it over, and everything will be fine.

Try this, Gazette. Try this, Wilderness Society. Try this, state government: Get the heck out of the way. You'd be amazed at how many Montanans suddenly find themselves employed.

We Wuz Robbed!

$75 million returned to taxpayers so far, so says Governor Scheister. He also says the total rebates are expected to be around $100 million.

Trouble is, the surplus that caused the rebates was $1 billion. So they're telling us, "We took way more of your money than we should have. You get one tenth of it back."

I am owed, Scheister. You took too much and you didn't give it back.

You can say anything you want about Scheister except this: You cannot say he gave back everything extra that he took.

Booya! The Montana Republican Party is officially in the blogosphere! So you're wondering, will it make a difference?

Yup.

OK, so yeah, not many people actually read blogs. But them as do read'em are important. Blog readers are activist and want to make a difference and those are the peeps politicians need to reach. Good on the GOP for wading into the fray.

The Coal Cowbunk

Does the Gov wanna dig some coal or not? He trots around the country getting his mug on the idiot box (where it belongs!) and letting fawning celebrity's call him "The Coal Cowboy." He does a huge dog and pony show (More dog than pony) in front of the Bull Mountain coal mine, acting like he personally saved Montana (the mine's buried in permitting trouble as the least of its failures).

But he has trouble making up his mind whether he supports the new coal plant in Great Falls. And now?

His economic development guru Evan Barrett says Schweitzer doesn't support new coal fired plants.

What the Governor really supports is talking. He supports telling Montanans that he's gonna make the State a major player in American energy policy. He supports telling environmentalists he's gonna protect the state from those nasty little carbon emissions from coal, so Baucus doesn't have to buy more pollution credits. He supports telling reporters that he's gonna be in tomorrow's headline.

When some legislators called out Barrett's anti-coal remarks, Barrett told them not to assume they understood what they were talking about. Nice.

And how many of the so-called "clean" coal plants the Governor claims he does support are operating in Montana since he's begun his crusade?

I'll give you a clue: It's less than .0001, and more than -1.

Sheister Accounting

Our buddies at the Gazette say there's a question about Schweitzer's accounting method that he used to come up with extra tax refunds. Apparently "non-standard accounting" was used to get the state's budget surplus up high enough to justify even more refunds.

Now, I like more refunds as much as the next guy. By which I mean, I don't like them as much as I would have liked permanent tax relief. But I don't think it's OK to use bad accounting to make it happen.

If we can just fudge the numbers however we want so the taxpayers get more back, then I'll be making some changes in the way I do my state income taxes next year. And when the Department of Revenue comes calling, I'll just quote David Ewer to them: "If you want to make the argument for less in tax rebates, that's your business."

A New Political Low

So yeah, Max Baucus, our senior Senator from Montana, has gone from taking credit to actually BUYING credit.

It's natural for politicians to take credit, especially for work they didn't do. But Baucus apparently needs even more credit than he can take. So he's buying it.

In this Gazette article, Max Baucus says he buys "air pollution credits." Supposedly that makes him not guilty for all the global warming he causes by flying, driving, and giving speeches.

I bet I'm not the only one asking, "Um, what?" Here's how it works.

Baucus flies home on a jet. That jet dumps X carbon into the atmosphere. Max's share of that carbon is X/200 -- or maybe X/150 since he probably talked while flying and contributed even more to global warming. So let's call X/150 Max's carbon emissions for the flight.

So maybe somewhere else in the world, there's an activity that takes X/150 carbon back OUT of the atmosphere. If Max could have credit for that, his flight would be "zero emission," and he'd be a good little environmentalist. Like any politician, he went looking for a way to take the credit. Turns out its for sale. A company called Native Energy sells the credit for the work they do that takes carbon out of the atmosphere.

Someone else does the good environmental thing, Max Baucus takes the credit. Nothing new here. Except this part:

What does Native Energy do that supposedly takes carbon out of the atmosphere? Well, they invest in wind farms -- of the kind environmentalists kill in Montana. But... um... OK, so a wind farm has zero emissions. But putting in nothing is not the same as taking something out. The only way a wind farm could be said to take carbon out of the atmosphere is if the electricity from the wind farm REPLACED electricity from, say, a coal plant.

Does that really happen? Of course not. When you get a new 50 megawtts from a wind farm, does anyone really believe a coal plant somewhere reduces production by 50 mw? No.

So. Take credit. Take credit for something you didn't do. BUY credit for something you didn't do. BUY credit for something that never even got done in the first place. Yup, it's a new political low.

But at least Baucus looks good.

Let's talk about today's Gazette: Enviros killed a wind farm. The sad thing isn't the fact that there's not gonna be a wind farm. The sad thing is that anyone is surprised.

Let's look at the environmentalist movement's own rhetoric. Every good environmentalist will tell you that the real cause of "global warming" -- and every other environmental problem -- is population growth.

Next step: Any good scientist will tell you that you can't get something for nothing. For population to grow requires ... it requires more. More food, more space, and MORE ENERGY.

It's simple, folks. Cheap, easy energy equals a thriving human society, which equals population growth, which equals a blemish on the face of the mother Earth goddess, or whatever.

Make no mistake: environmentalists do not like energy. Not coal energy, not wind energy, not green energy, not purple with yellow polka-dots energy. Of COURSE environmentalists killed a wind power plant. They'll kill anything that makes it more likely humans will thrive at the expence of other species.