Have you heard about Agenda 21? It’s a non-binding UN plan for sustainable development signed by then-President George HW Bush in 1992. It’s also a plan to abolish private property rights and herd us all into cities under the auspices of a one-world government. Or, as Montana House Bill 583 put it:

Agenda 21…calls for the abolition of private property throughout the world, education for global citizenship, and the use of technology for the management and control of all human activity.

I’m no lawyer, but that means robots will be our masters. Rep. Randy Pinocci (R–Sun River) sponsored this bill, but he is by no means the only member of his caucus terrified at the implications of this non-binding environmental agreement from 20 years ago. At Pinocci’s request, former Madison County commissioner Dan Happel told the House Judiciary Committee that Agenda 21 would outlaw raising livestock and traveling in private vehicles, and that “single-family homes and suburban communities will be eliminated.”

That definitely sounds like something the UN could do and, for that matter, like something the Montana House could stop. Either that or it sounds like a conspiracy theory tailor-made to address everything conservative Montanans love: trucks, the suburbs, using “urban” as a euphemism for “not white.” Sadly, HB 583 has been defeated, and Pinocci et al will have to get back to the extremely boring business of actually governing the state. I wrote about in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. You should check it out and then yell at that guy who keeps posting the same comment about how much money Indian reservations spend. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.

I will never get tired of this picture of Art Wittich. The 2015 session of the Montana legislature is his time: very conservative Republicans control the House, and they are putting forward all manner of thrilling ideas. Wittich is head of the House Human Services Committee, which last month subpoenaed state aid workers to share anecdotes about fraud and abuse, so you know he’s looking for ways to cut welfare costs. He can have this idea for free: if you want to spend less on welfare, make people pay child support. The majority of TANF recipients are single mothers, and 40% of food stamp beneficiaries in Montana are children of single mothers. Only 41% of single parents receive their legally mandated child support payments each month. That amounts to a massive shift in financial responsibility from parents to the state—not by welfare moms, but by deadbeat dads. Stronger child support enforcement should appeal to both parties: if more single moms actually got their child support, fewer would need welfare to get by. And if there were no financial advantage to abandoning their children, fathers might do it less. What we have here is a moral solution to a budget problem. It supports traditional family structures and saves the state money. Republicans in the Montana legislature should jump on this idea with both feet. You can read about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links. In the meantime, consider who is a bigger drain on society: welfare moms or the dudes who left them?

Last week, Montana’s own Ryan Zinke celebrated his first month as a congressman by correcting the President. Obama was mistaken to think his proposed operation against ISIS could be successful without large-scale ground operations, Zinke said to pretty much any news outlet that would listen. In doing so, he also dropped a thunderbolt: Ryan Zinke used to be in the Navy. I think I speak for all Montanans when I say that I am shocked to learn of this chapter in his life. It’s no wonder Zinke never mentioned his military service, though, what with America’s pervasive bias against the troops. The only way to restore respect for the men and women of our armed services is to get them into combat immediately, before our quick successes in Iraq and Afghanistan convince the public that war is something anybody can do. That’s my argument in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, and I’m sticking to it. Probably, this one will cost me some readers. Not you, though—we’ll both be back here tomorrow for Friday links. Right?

Rep. Tom Burnett (R–Bozeman) sits on the Montana State House’s Joint Appropriations Subcommittee for Health and Human Services. Last week, he sent an email to his colleagues outlining a six-point “method of preventing seriously disabling mental illness, addiction, depression, obesity, diabetes, low-income status and dementia” that included weekly church attendance and “meals eaten with others, at a table, not on the couch.” Burnett’s advice about nutritious food and not masturbating all the time is probably good. His presentation of that advice as a budget discussion—and attendant implication that we wouldn’t need food stamps if poor people would stop jerking off—is probably bad. In this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, I suggest that the Burnett Method does not alleviate poverty so much as it alleviates compassion for the poor. Elsewhere in the issue, I beg you to stop putting pictures of your kids on Tinder. It’s the Valentine’s Day edition, so be sure to also read Sarah Aswell’s essay on the hideous details of her marriage to Ben al-Fowlkes. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links, as if this opulence weren’t enough.