Juras revives dispute with defunct student sex column

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 1 Comment
Montana Supreme Court candidate Kristen Juras

Montana Supreme Court candidate Kristen Juras

Politics is a chess match that attracts the most brilliant tactical minds of our society. Just kidding—it’s a magnet for confident dummies. I bet Kristen Juras is very smart in most situations, but she became her worst self last month, when she revived her dispute with the University of Montana student newspaper over a sex advice column that ran for one semester seven years ago.

As an assistant law professor at UM in 2009, Juras objected to the “Bess Sex” column in the Montana Kaimin, writing letters to the editor and eventually taking her complaint to the president of the university and the dean of the journalism school. Nothing happened, possibly because neither the president nor the dean exercises editorial control over the student newspaper.

“Bess Sex” author Bess Davis (now Bess Pallares) graduated later that year, and the column ended. You’d think that would put the matter to rest, but the Montana Cowgirl Blog brought it up last month, prompting Juras to issue the following statement on Facebook:

The column was discontinued after the United States launched a comprehensive review of the university’s handling of sexual assault and harassment complaints, including a review of student education efforts. Can’t find copies of the columns? That’s because all of the major newspapers refused to publish them.

That just isn’t true. The Department of Justice began its investigation of UM in 2012, three years after “Bess Sex” ended. And major newspapers “refused” to publish it in the same way NBC refuses to broadcast Game of Thrones. It was a Kaimin column, never offered for syndication.

This kind of reasoning suggests Juras might form her opinions first and her reasons second—a questionably desirable quality in a supreme court justice. You can read more instances of her non-standard approach to reasoning in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links, which will include an exciting surprise. Remember last week, when I said the same thing? I mean it this time, probably.

 

 

UM sports generate $173M a year, not including court fees

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 0 Comment
Washington-Grizzly Stadium at the University of Montana

Washington-Grizzly Stadium at the University of Montana

The University of Montana’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research has produced a study estimating the economic value of Grizzly athletics at $120.8 million in sales and $52.8 million in compensation each year. Those are big numbers, especially in a town the size of Missoula. The study’s methodology, however, suggests it was conducted with an eye toward making those numbers as large as possible.

For example, it counts tuition and fees payed by all student athletes, plus whatever scholarships they get, plus tax funding for UM athletics. It counts travel and accommodation expenses during away games, as well as lodging, meals and even auto repairs purchased by visiting fans. It counts not just the salaries of all athletics-related employees, from trainers to food service vendors, but also the value of their benefits and the estimated economic activity their spending generates. The assumption is that if Grizzly sports didn’t exist, everyone involved with them would disappear.

If that’s its approach, I think BBER forgot some items. For example, the study does not take into account sales of Jon Krakauer’s book Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town. It doesn’t include the salaries of police who investigated student athletes or the attorneys who represented them in court. It completely overlooks game-day alcohol sales. It’s possible these lines didn’t make it into the BBER calculations because they reflect an aspect of UM athletics that has been controversial in recent years.

I choose to look at this study as a tentative step toward acknowledging those problems. Yes, it introduces the strange scenario in which UM athletics vanishes completely, and it conducts an argument so exaggerated and purely economic as to be almost funny. But it is also a tacit acknowledgment that something has gone wrong. The first step to defending your net value is admitting you have a downside, even if you must introduce a false dichotomy in the process.

No one is talking about disbanding the Griz. A lot of people are talking about the massive sexual assault scandal that may or may not have reduced enrollment by 20% over the last five years. If we’re going to perform a broad accounting of costs and benefits, let’s make sure we count everything. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, which is sure to anger superfans. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links!

Rumors about Bullock, O’Leary leap from blogs to newspaper

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 1 Comment
What's going on between Governor Bullock and this big check?

What’s going on between Governor Bullock and this big check?

Here’s a fun game: try to name the most prominent policy idea of the 2016 Montana governor’s race. Republican Greg Gianforte wants to improve the economy by—wait for it—lowering taxes and lifting regulations. Governor Steve Bullock wants to continue being governor. If ideas were glue, these two couldn’t build a model plane. But it doesn’t matter, because they’d gouge each other’s eyes out before they got all the parts out of the box. Their almost purely negative campaign got even darker last week, when NewsTalk KGVO ran this story, ostensibly about Bullock’s use of the state plane but also about how he uses it to take trips with cabinet member Meg O’Leary.

Rumors that there is something untoward about their relationship have circulated on conservative blogs for some time. Until last week, you never heard about it in the mainstream press, probably because there’s no evidence. But then KGVO ran the headline “Governor Bullock Brought Meg O’Leary to Paul McCartney Concert Instead of First Lady, State Plane Use Questioned.”

As usual when a headline uses the passive verb “questioned,” they omitted the phrase “by us.” A subsequent story in the more scrupulous Billings Gazette contradicted several of KGVO’s implications.  It seems like the original piece was pretty thinly sourced. It didn’t say much that hadn’t already been said—also without substantiation—in various right-leaning blogs. So why run it now?

Maybe it had something to do with the news that Oracle was moving 100 jobs from Bozeman to Texas. Gianforte sold his software company RightNow Technologies to Oracle in 2011. His success in creating high-wage jobs has been a major selling point of his campaign, but this layoff undermines that. Is it possible KGVO ran the O’Leary story to overshadow the layoffs? Although Gianforte’s communications director, Aaron Flint, has a friendly relationship with KGVO, it would be irresponsible to say he nudged them. I mean, what are we—KGVO?

You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, in which I challenge the candidates to come up with some idea—any idea—related to policy. The voters of Montana deserve something better than a choice between negatives. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links, hopefully including a fun surprise.

Medical marijuana opponent says one hit is like ten beers

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 0 Comment
People who had one hit and ten beers, respectively

Respective effects of the quantities indicated

Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, the history of Montana’s medical marijuana law is long and interesting only if you’re high. Suffice to say the 2004 legalization has been subject to multiple reversals and amendments from succeeding legislatures, and now the issue has risen to the level of ballot initiatives. Yesterday, Missoula’s City Club debated I-182, to let doctors prescribe marijuana for PTSD and chronic pain. The con position was advanced by Stephen Zabawa—sponsor of his own ballot initiative to ban medical marijuana entirely—who gave us this, via the Missoulian:

“Quite frankly, you can have one beer, and you’re OK,” Zabawa said. However, he equated one “hit” of marijuana to 10 beers and said the active ingredient will “knock your socks off.”

Just try pot, dude. Before you devote your whole year and thousands of donors’ dollars to making sure no one can get pot, take that one hit yourself and see what it does. It’s true that if you drink ten beers, your socks will come off as if by magic. I’ll bet a hundred dollars to your twenty that you don’t get the same effect from one hit, just as soon as we can get to your doctor and make sure you’re not allergic.

Seriously—I call on Stephen Zabawa to smoke some pot. It’s the only responsible thing. After you hear that one hit gets you ratfuck wasted but before you organize a statewide movement, see what it does. If you’re not willing to try it yourself, have friend A take one puff of a joint while you confiscate friend B’s keys, phone and wallet, then make him drink ten beers. I think the difference in their outcomes will surprise you. Until you conduct such an experiment, your activism is the persistence of a man who has no idea what he’s taking about.

I wouldn’t know either, because I never tried grass. It was illegal in New York, and although you could still buy it we could never remember where, because whenever we got any we blacked out and thew up on our dicks. That’s why I stay out of politics. You won’t find me organizing ballot initiatives. Hell, I don’t even vote. I may not know anything, but at least my ignorance knows its bounds.

As Trump founders, Gianforte mailer strives to imitate him

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 1 Comment
The mailer Greg Gianforte, Republican for governor of Montana, sent last week

The mailer Greg Gianforte, Republican for governor of Montana, sent last week

Yes, that’s Governor Steve Bullock, letting terrorist refugees from war-torn stock photos just loom over the mountains of Montana. He refuses to use his power as governor to ban Syrians. Greg Gianforte, on the other hand, promises to stop refugee resettlement—presumably after he takes a job at the State Department, since the governor of Montana does not have the authority to prevent foreign nationals with valid visas from entering the state.

That’s one problem with the mailer above, which the Gianforte campaign sent out last week. Another problem is that it arrived in Missoula at roughly the same time as a family of refugees from the Congo, where Islamist militias are targeting Christians. Welcome to Montana, scared and exhausted family of six! One of our two candidates for governor has promised to prevent you.

The third problem with this mailer is tactical. I don’t know whether Gianforte or Bullock is ahead right now. No one does, because Montana is too big and empty to poll. But Bullock has the advantage of incumbency, and Gianforte has the disadvantage of the giant albatross perched atop his ticket. Donald Trump won the Montana primary with 74% of the vote, after all the other candidates dropped out. The candidate who got the most donations from individuals within the state was Ben Carson. Wild for guns and freedom though they are, Montana Republicans prefer a soft-spoken type. They’re ranchers and small business people, and the immigrants with whom they compete are mostly Canadian. A lot of them are likely to stay home this year, because the Republican candidate for president is a shit-eating wildman.

Why, then, would Gianforte emulate him with this mailer? Low-information xenophobes are already turning out. He should be pitching his appeal to the lifelong Republicans in this state who are disappointed in the top of their ticket. He should show the Rotary Club wing of his party why he’s still worth voting for, even if Trump isn’t. Arab-baiting appeals to public ignorance are not the way to do it. That’s what I think, anyway; only November will tell. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.