Quote for the day…
Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change. ― Jim Rohn
Today’s independent commentary deals with these issues:
- Montana Secretary of State
- Campaign Signs
- Go Liz Go
- Reading Assignments
MONTANA SECRETARY OF STATE:
The Daily Montanan reported last week that the Montana Secretary of State’s office spent about $1.3 million on legal fees, far surpassing its $100,000 budget, defending election laws being challenged in courts in the state.
Once again those fiscal conservative Republicans are spending taxpayer money like drunken sailors. Secretary of State (SoS) Christi Jacobsen is one of, if not the most incompetent SOS in Montana history.
Montana has several problems and the $1.3 million could help solve them. Paying lawyers to represent the state in defending unconstitutional laws is not the best use of our resources.
Read the Daily Montanan report HERE.
CAMPAIGN SIGNS:
I don’t get around as much as I once did, but I have noticed that it is campaign sign season. I have put many campaign signs up in my life and pounded tons of rebar into the ground for the bigger signs.
I obeyed the rules.
There are easy rules to follow about where to place campaign signs. There are rules HERE and HERE. Read the rules; don’t be a cheater.
I live near the University of Providence (UP) in Great Falls and one of our local MAGA candidates must have a sweet deal with either Target corporation or UP because his sign is on the fence that separates the two properties. Another one of his signs is clearly on the right-of-way of a city street. He’s a dumbass, so I am not surprised that he disregards the rules.
I think it’s very brave of people to place campaign signs on their property these days. With the nutjobs out in full force this campaign season, who knows what will happen to your vehicle or home if a passerby does not like your candidate.
GO LIZ GO:
NBC News reported over the weekend that U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) said that she would be willing to campaign for Democrats as she criticized her party’s acceptance of candidates who deny the results of the 2020 election.
It’s sad how far the Republican Party has steered to the right and how the MAGA nutjobs have ruined the party from the top all the way down to local commissioners. Cheney sees this.
Cheney is one of the few elected officials who place the country ahead of politics. As she said in July:
We have to elect serious candidates who will take their obligations and their oaths seriously. We have to be able to come together and stop the dangerous kind of toxic politics that we have seen.
Read the NBC News report HERE.
READING ASSIGNMENTS:
Here are some articles you should read…
Helena IR – VA report says Montana has ‘significantly higher’ rate of veteran suicide
Much more needs to be done…
Bozeman Daily Chronicle – Editorial: The cost of performative politics
It’s kind of embarrassing for the GOP…
The Hill – The seven Democrats most likely to run for president — if Biden bows out
We need to elect moderates…
The Western Word 
Good Morning Jackie,
Thank you for mentioning the 1.3 million dollars of state (taxpayer) money to pay legal fees related to the election laws passed by the radical Montana legislative majority.
While this is bad in and of itself, I think there is a diret correlation between the constitutional challenges to this new voter legislation and Governpr Gianforte’s attempts to evade the public’s right to know regarding his discussions with his staff concerning the signing of these bills or using the veto. I would posit that much of his advice included warnings that this legislation had constitutional problems. He doesn’t want us to know that he ignored this advice, and put this litigation in motion. With this litigation only being in the initial stages, the cost of it will continue to rise.
Similary, the media has reported that our erstwhile Attorney General has signed on to more litigation arising out of Texas on national issues which rarely have direct effect on Montana. The citizens of Montana need an accounting of the taxpayer funds being expended on these extraneous issues and the actual work they are not able to do on Montana issues.
I believe the latest foray by the AG involves the tracking of gun sales by credit card agencies. This is a minimal step to try to address the gun carnage in America, which I believe horrifies most Montanans. One can only imagine that the AG took the pulse of your Sheriff Slaughter and his cohorts on any issue related to sane gun control and went with it.
I hope you can assist in getting some sunlight on these issues as conservative insanity seems to be weilding its power in favor of very narrow interests, only tangentially related to Montana’s real problems.
Thank you. It seems our AG has never met a right wing lawsuit he did not like.
I’ll keep on exploring the misuse of taxpayer funds and fight the tax and fee increases every step of the way. -JmB
Thanks. This issue does need some investigation. These guys might blow the whole surplus on litigation. I apologize for my typos, got going too quick and hit the button before editing.
Keep up the good work.
The legislature needs to get honest and transparent with the taxpayers and appropriate enough dollars up front for legal fees to defend their unconstitutional attempted power grabs, particularly when so many of the laws had constitutionality questions before Gianforte signed them. Just $100,000 budgeted and $1.4 million spent (so far)? The $100,000 in the budget was nothing more than B.S.
It’s also troubling that the SOS office enterprise fund seems little more than a discretionary slush fund for Jacobsen to use as she pleases. If there’s that much spare cash jingling around being unused for actual operations then the businesses that pay the fees into that fund are getting charged too much.
And no one in this administration is accountable for exceeding budgets?