I’m in the Times and the Indy, talking that mess

By Dan Brooks in Self-Promotion 2 Comments

A newsstand seen through Roddy Piper’s magic glasses in They Live

It’s a big Thursday for Combat! blog, because I am in the New York Times. Apparently everyone who works there drinks, since they deigned to publish my Letter of Recommendation: Pedialyte. Do you know Pedialyte? Our hypocritical modern society markets it as a formula for children, but really it’s for adults. Specifically, it’s for adults who drink and work out to the point of vomiting, even though they are old now and should probably know better. I am old now. But I know nothing! Head on over to the Times and see how I somehow manage to make a living anyway.

In other news, literally, I wrote about John Carpenter’s misunderstood 1988 horror-satire They Live for the Missoula Independent. I first saw They Live in 2006, when it was presented to me as a so-bad-it’s-good eighties misfire. It is that. But at the time, I completely missed the subtext about Reaganomics and the amoral materialism that inspired Carpenter to make the movie in the first place. Today, Reag-o-nomical horror feels relevant again. The country is in the midst of some sort of nightmarish eighties throwback, but the people who most need to hear They Live‘s message have determined the alien conspirators who live among us represent…Jews. Seriously—Carpenter had to go on Twitter to tell internet Nazis it was about yuppies and not the Rothschild conspiracy. That, right there, is a neat encapsulation of our political moment. Even if you don’t care about politics or weird-toned eighties camp, They Live is worth watching for this the greatest fight scene in film history:

Meanwhile, in yet more news or at least opinion, Rep. Barry Usher (R–Roundup) has begun to walk back a bill that would ban bicycles from most of Montana’s public roads. Usher claimed his proposal, which would make it illegal to ride a bicycle outside of a municipal area on any two-lane road without a paved shoulder, was in the interest of bike safety. It seemed more like a motorist convenience bill, designed to save drivers from the danger of having to slow down and wait to pass. Little did he realize that almost none of the highways in the state have paved shoulders. Because the bill also applies to pedestrians and people in wheelchairs, it would make it a crime for people in rural areas to leave their properties, unless they were in cars. For once, though, public outcry has carried the day, and Usher now plans to rewrite his bill if not scratch it entirely. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent.

Victory is sweet. This is the last Combat! blog of the week, because I am going to Seattle tomorrow morning for a fencing tournament. Will I win? Absolutely not. There will be Olympians and shit, and I started fencing last year. But will I have the opportunity to frustrate vastly superior fencers with my weird style, throwing them into the tantrums characteristic of the preppie class? You bet your sweet, unguarded hand I will. I’ll see you Monday, probably with a bunch of weird bruises on my leg.

Eugene Graf IV, less humorous candidates vie for Zinke’s seat

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 0 Comment

Congressional candidate and caricature of a rich grandson Eugene Graf IV

Since Donald Trump announced his plan to appoint as Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, Montana’s sole representative in the US House, no fewer than six Republicans have threatened to campaign for his seat. Six! One of them is Eugene Graf IV, the scion of a Bozeman real estate fortune pictured above. Graf: He doesn’t remember shoving you into anything. As much as I would like to see Montana politics return to old-school corporatocracy, Graf is a long shot. He has not previously run for elected office, and his work experience is limited to working for his family business and, as past president of the Montana Homebuilders Association, lobbying for his family business. Yet he is sure to meet one qualification for office: the $1,740 fee the Montana Republican Party is charging each candidate to run.

That fee—set by state law at 1% of the salary of the office sought—is designed to defray the cost of organizing statewide primaries. It seems a little odd to charge it for candidates in this special election, where a nominee will be chosen not by primaries but by members of the state Republican committee. The food at that meeting is going to be great, I guess. Assuming he ponies up, the most likely nominee seems to be Ed Buttrey, a moderate Republican credited with orchestrating the compromise that allowed Montana to accept federal Medicaid funds last session. Among conservatives, of course, that’s a debit. But they have yet to put up a candidate of their own who can plausibly threaten him. This makes Buttrey’s run a barometer in the ongoing conflict between moderates and the right wing in Montana’s GOP. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent.

Why read about the recent past, though, when you can focus on the future? This week marks the Indy’s annual Bold Predictions issue, in which various people including me speculate on what 2017 will bring in Missoula, Montana, and the world. My first two bold predictions, made in 2013 and 2014, crushed it: Missoula really did set out to buy the water works in 2014, and conservatives in the legislature really did overplay their hand in 2015. Last year’s prediction—that Uber would put at least one of Missoula’s two taxi companies out of business—has yet to come true. But there’s still time! Keep watching this space or even some more reliable news outlet for updates on my prediction for 2017, which is that Republicans will become staunch defenders of Medicaid until they can blame someone else for taking it away. I also predict we’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.

Medical marijuana is legal in Montana, but for how long?

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 0 Comment

The face of chronic pain

Good news for Montanans with anxiety and subscriptions to Xbox Live: a judge has ruled that medical marijuana providers can start selling to any number of patients immediately. Ballot initiative I-182, which passed in November, was supposed to repeal the three-patient limit that made it impossible to run a dispensary for profit. Unfortunately, a “scrivener’s error” inadvertently delayed repeal until July 2017. Apparently, the authors of the initiative rewrote it at the last minute, changing the section numbers but not changing the part about when which sections took effect.

You don’t see the anti-abortion people making these kinds of mistakes. Anyway, Judge James Reynolds of Helena ruled last week the law’s intent should overrule its letter. He struck down the three-patient limit effective immediately. Doctors in Montana can diagnose patients with chronic pain or PTSD and prescribe legal marijuana, and the market can provide it to them.

It would appear that one of the longest-running controversies in state politics has been settled. The typo that delayed the ballot initiative that repealed the law that worked around the governor’s veto of the repeal of the original ballot initiative that legalized medical marijuana in 2004 has been overruled! When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound like the issue is settled after all. We’re right back where we started, plus PTSD and chronic pain.

When I got to Missoula, dispensaries were everywhere, and so were their products. Between March 2009 and March 2011, the number of medical marijuana cardholders in the state went from 2,000 to 39,000. I talked to electricians who said the greenhouse boom was the best thing that ever happened to their business. Garden suppliers said the same thing. Montana had a growth industry, which is a little like the Cubs having a shot at the World Series.

Enter the party of growth and business. In 2011, Republicans in the state legislature voted to repeal the ballot initiative that legalized medical marijuana—only to be vetoed by then-governor Brian Schweitzer. They passed the three-patient limit for each provider instead, and it worked. No dispensary could stay in business with only three customers. The suit to have that law declared unconstitutional lasted five years—just long enough for November’s ballot initiative, I-182, to repeal the law instead.

It seems this issue has been laid to rest in much the same condition as it arose. A ballot initiative has made medical marijuana legal and done little to limit the number of its patients. We’ve even got a Democratic governor and Republican legislature. Will the opponents of marijuana stop narc-ing out for a minute and leave the voters’ will in force? I hope they do, but I bet they won’t. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. I got up and shoveled four inches of snow this morning, and already my sidewalk is covered again. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links, snowed-in and cozy with nothing to do but type, just like in The Shining.

Ed Butcher and Snoop Dogg are old, but only one is good

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 1 Comment
Montana Republican Ed Butcher (right) and Snoop Dogg

Montana Republican Ed Butcher (right) and Snoop Dogg

Readers of the Missoulian’s opinion pages know the paper has a strict policy of publishing only those opinions submitted in writing. Back in March, they published a letter to the editor from a woman who is not prejudiced, arguing that the Bible commands us to keep separate from Muslims. But that’s just an LTE, and the Missoulian’s stated policy is to publish all letters that “meet our guidelines.” Presumably they curate their guest columns a little more carefully, but you know what happens when we presume: our local newspaper publishes an editorial arguing that people without jobs should not be allowed to vote.

Ed Butcher is a former state senator and self-described historian/teacher of history, although his last teaching position—as a lecturer in American studies at Great Falls University—ended forty years ago. He appears to be retired, but don’t worry about him running afoul of his own proposal, because he owns a ranch. Like many retired landowners, he has a keen eye for who isn’t working. Quote:

Thousands of people are marching in highly organized mass protests across America. They obviously are not working for a living; so who is feeding, clothing and housing these radicals who are railing against the society supporting their “lifestyle?”

Butcher goes on to trace the decline of “the founding fathers’ republic” to the extension of the vote to men without property, a process that occurred during the 1820s. Now that’s conservative. His remedy is to require proof of employment to vote. You can read my full-throated defense of this idea in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. Mister Butcher—Ed—if you’re reading this, reasonable people can disagree. But you are not a reasonable person, so I am forced to agree with you wholeheartedly.

It’s hard to read about anything other than fascism lately, but if you care to take a moment for something lighter, Snoop Dogg is coming to Missoula as part of the Puff Puff Pass Tour Part 2. Let’s all take a moment to wonder what the fudge that might look like, and whether our girlfriend made good on her threat to buy tickets. Once that’s done, check out my meditation on the uncharted path of the middle-aged rapper, also in this week’s Indy. If you had told me, when this song came out and I was a young dummy in Brooklyn, that I would write about Snoop Dogg for a Montana newspaper in 2016, I would have been confused. Once you told me Donald Trump would be president, though, I would have known exactly what kind of person I was talking to.

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.