Buying Votes?

Amanda Carpenter of Townhall.com wrote an interesting piece about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) vote in the U.S. Senate. This vote gave immunity to phone companies for helping with the Global War on Terror.

Ms. Carpenter writes,

Montana’s own U.S. Senator Jon Tester was one of the 24 who voted against the FISA reauthorization and received campaign contributions from trial lawyers, according to Ms. Carpenter. Luckily the FISA reauthorization passed the Senate. Max Baucus voted for it.

Veterans

The 110^th session of Congress has the lowest percentage of veterans in the House and Senate since World War II. And that number is expected to drop even further with 10 veterans planning to retire or run for other offices. Right now only 24% of the members of Congress actually served in the military. After Korea, that number was 70%. (Source: Montana Legionnaire February-March 2008, Page 6)

So do non-veterans in Congress really care about veterans? Some do, but they have the wade through the bureaucracy and learn about the issue. They just don’t have the time to do a decent job. Many have veterans on their staff, which is good. I don’t know the percentage of Montana’s Congressional Delegation’s staff who are veterans. Most of the time all their “caring” is because of votes. Many elected officials understand that veterans are likely to vote, so they try and talk the talk to get their votes.

It’s Getting Ugly

From what I read in the newspaper, from bloggers, and hear on the street, it appears the residents and elected officials in and around Great Falls are having some tough times these days. It’s gotten nasty. I don’t have a ‘dog in the show’ but I do care about the military presence in the Great Falls area.

Great Falls has many great qualities that attracts people. It appears there’s a lot of dislike for the locally elected officials these days over several issues, like the airport, the animal shelter, a proposed coal plant, to speaking limits at city commission meetings. There’s even talk of a recall petition for some elected officials.

I have opinions on many of these issues, but I don’t really care to get into it, right now.

Great Falls just hired a new city manager. I wonder if the new city manager did a background check on the city before accepting what may be one of the tougher jobs a city manager could get into.

To make the debate on several issues more civil, they have decided to hold a workshop, yep a workshop called, “Can We Talk? A Conference on Civil Discourse.” It seems many of the folks in Great Falls are just not happy campers these days. That’s too bad because the city has a lot to offer new businesses and new residents. Hopefully everyone who attends will learn a little from this conference.