Ravalli County planning commissioner warns of “drunk Indians”

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment
Welcome to Hamilton! We hate you.

Welcome to Hamilton! We hate you.

The last time we checked in with the government of Ravalli County, commissioners had rejected federal Title X funding and closed the county’s only family planning clinic. That was dumb, but at least it pertained to things the commission actually governed. Two weeks ago, county officials met with representatives from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes to discuss their objection to the CSKT placing tribal land at Medicine Tree under trust of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Ravalli County gets $808 in property taxes from Medicine Tree every year, and they had appealed the CSKT’s disposition of its sacred land. Commissioners also warned tribal officials not to build a casino on it. Jan Wisniewski, head of the county planning board, took the floor at the end of the meeting to observe that jails in Havre are full of “drunk Indians” and that historically, Indians use trust lands to “get drunk and try and run back into the reservation so they don’t get caught.” You can read about it in my latest column in the Missoula Independent. In case you’re wondering if Wisniewski is in fact a great guy, the Tea Party stalwart also filed for election as a Democratic precinct captain in 2012. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.

 

 

Now busted, American Tradition Partnership does not exist

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 4 Comments
A weasel

A weasel

The last time we checked in with American Tradition Partnership, its attorneys were simulatenously disclaiming and demanding return of a box of documents found in a Colorado meth house that tracked the 501(c)4 organization’s coordination with Republican campaigns. Before that, they were publishing fake newspapers linking then-gubernatorial candidate Steve Bullock to sex offenders, and before that they convinced the Supreme Court to overturn Montana’s campaign finance laws per Citizens United. Last week, a district judge in Montana fined ATP over a quarter million dollars, saying it had shown “complete disregard” for those laws in 2008. But an attorney for ATP says the group is operatively defunct and “suggested it could be hard to collect any potential penalties.” The 2008 election was like five years ago anyway.

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IRS plans new rules for 501(c)4 organizations

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 4 Comments
Political spending by tax-exempt groups over the last decade, according to the Center for Responsive Politics

Political spending by tax-exempt groups according to the Center for Responsive Politics

If you want to understand the problem of false equivalence in political reporting, consider this article from the Wall Street Journal about new IRS rules governing the political activities of 501(c)4 nonprofit organizations. The designation is intended for social welfare organizations, but it also covers the NRA and a slough of Tea Party groups, whose primary contribution to social welfare is relentless advocacy for their own legislative and political interests. As the Journal puts it in the story’s second paragraph:

Rules proposed Tuesday could at once help to curb the explosion in political spending by nonprofit groups, such as conservative heavyweight Crossroads GPS and the liberal Priorities USA, while setting clearer standards that could help the government avoid future dust-ups with politically active nonprofit organizations.

It sounds like Crossroads GPS and Priorities USA are two sides of the same dark-money coin, right? Except nine paragraphs later, we learn that Crossroads raised $180 million in 2011-2012, and Priorities raised $10.7 million.

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Friday links! Market forces edition

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment
The market corrects a lady in Singapore.

The market corrects a lady in Singapore.

Thanks to telecommunications, an amazing amount of time has elapsed between when I clicked “new post” and now. People call me and ask me to do things, and I do them instead of the the things I like because those people have money. You can’t fight the market. While government is an obtrusive artifact that has no right to interfere in our lives, the market is a natural force that must be allowed to operate freely, lest it become enraged. Today is Friday, and the only true freedom lies in letting the aggregate consequences of everyone doing whatever they want tell us all what to do. Won’t you follow the trending line with me?

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On Missoula’s well-liked mayor

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 2 Comments
An elderly constituent attacks Missoula mayor John Engen.

An elderly constituent attacks Missoula mayor John Engen.

Two weeks ago, Missoula mayor John Engen won reelection with 65% of the vote. He faced four challengers who registered their candidacies on the day of the filing deadline, and the closest one got 16%. He ran unopposed in 2009. John Engen is going to be mayor for a long time, partly because he has no credible rivals but mostly because he is extremely likable. He listens to people. He is particularly sensitive to neighborhood concerns, as when he sided with residents who opposed Missoula College’s expansion to the UM golf course, or when he supported a city council plan to retroactively zone a soup kitchen out of business. That last one doesn’t sound like such an unqualified triumph, does it? Mayor Engen has the virtues of his faults, and sometimes his willingness to accommodate his constituents can lead him astray. That’s the subject of my most recent column in the Missoula Independent, which you can read instead of a real blog post. Or you can click on over to one of the web’s many clearinghouses for tasteful erotica—don’t let me tell you what to do. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.