The idea of retirement is not Biblical...

May the Saints preserve us...because guys like this sure won't!

 

 

Question of the day:  Why do these highly successful business moguls think they should run for public office?  Why not just stay in the private sector, create lots of these jobs they all crow about, and continue making money for themselves?  Why do they have this drive to mess with people's lives by telling them what to believe, where they should send their kids to school, and why they should never retire?

Greg Gianforte, Bozeman's mega-money man, has filled out paperwork for a Republican exploratory trek he hopes will end at the Governor's Mansion in Helena.

His resume shows an abundance of skill at running a large company, but absolutely no skill at running for public office.  The Gianforte financial picture reportedly shows his worth at somewhere around one-and-a-half billion dollars...give or take a few million.  Have you noticed that there seems to be no shortage of very rich businessmen and women in the Republican ranks that believe they can be the saviors of our states and our nation?

Gianforte's wife, Susan, is also chin deep in educational politics.  She seems to have a serious bone to pick with public schools and would like to see much less taxpayer money going to them and much more going to charter and private schools.  It seems to be a religious thing with her.  She gets very excited when pushing for the study of creation   in our schools. 

Wouldn't they make a marvelous team running our great State of Montana...into the ground?

They're not from Montana and I can't find a single person who invited them...much less asked them to muck up the progress we've enjoyed the past several years.

One teeny weeny quirk about Gianforte you might enjoy:  He says the idea of retirement is not Biblical.  So, that would probably fit right in with all of his other Republican views:  privatize Social Security, cut Medicare, cut Medicaid, and don't even think about retirement.  (Biblical thought: anyone caught trying to quit at sixty-five will be taken to the town square and stoned to death.)  Hence, no further need for Social Security, no wasteful payout from a company's pension plan, and no bleeding heart Liberals' need for AARP!  

I do have something that is Biblical, however.  A rich man can no more get to Heaven (or the Governor's Mansion) than a camel can get through the eye of a needle. 

How can we be so lucky...it seems these meddling rich people just keep falling into our laps.  We Montanans listened to the Republican witch hunt of a man named Walsh and elected one of these rich guys to the U.S. Senate, and we're still feeling the misery of that.

Praise the Lord...pass the antacids...and hang on to your retirement accounts...the real Montana Westerners will rise again!





    

Damn the Billionaires...Full Speed Ahead!

I was once told by an attorney that I would make a lousy defense witness because I appeared too pontifical while giving my answers during his pre-trial questioning.  He implied I was expressing my opinions in a pompous or dogmatic tone.

 

I had a different version, however.

 

I thought the entire law suit was turning into a charade and I was to become the "fall guy."  Enough about that.  It was complicated and boiled down to how-much-money-do-you-want, to-make-this-go-away?  I have a real dislike for settling arguments according to who can come up with the most money.

 

That also applies to elections.

 

Newspaper and television coverage of candidates begins and ends with one basic question:  Who has raised the most money?  We all know who has the money because we all know who has sold their soul to the millionaires and billionaires.  The Conservative-led (five to four) U. S. Supreme Court has also done their share of skewing the election outcomes by paving the way for big, rich old white guys to buy any election they choose.

 

That brings me around to the basic question that should be on every voter's mind.  It lays out the contradiction in our elections that does not confirm to any known straightforward thinking.  It is undeniably the most wrong-headed calculation by voters that I can think of today: Why do you vote for the one who has raked in the most money?

 

It is, of course, due to voter apathy and refusal by them to pay attention to facts.  In short,  we simply vote for the candidate who can afford to shove their name and image in front of us the most.  That, and their ability to shove their negative - and often erroneous - ads in our faces, as well.

 

The richest of them count on our folly.  They spend and we bend.

 

When will we decide to vote for a man or woman who will govern on our behalf instead of those who filled their coffers with untold amounts of money?

 

Is it possible to fool the money-moguls this one time?  Could we actually vote for the better candidates instead of the richest? 

 

Or are we all just sheep to the slaughter?

 

 

 



Voters, we just ain't paying attention!

 

 

Remember the bad ol' days of Montana's U.S. House of Representative, Denny Rehberg?

 

Well, like most of our politicians from the past, we seem to always find one more useless than their predecessor.  Such was the case beginning with Rehberg.  We grumbled about his Republican rubber stamp method of voting and his lack of ideas as far as submitting bills.  He was a hide-in-the-weeds and hope-no-one-will-see-me-being-a-bump-on-a-log kind of guy.

 

Then came Steve Daines.  Total disaster.  He voted - among other dumb GOP brain freezes - to shut down the government if "Obamacare" wasn't repealed.  Following that, a really bad decision by the voters put him in the U.S. Senate.  Fool us once, shame on you, Mr. Daines.  Fool us twice, shame on us!

 

Now we have another GOP stooge who followed Daines into the U.S. House.  Ryan Zenke got there, in part, with the hysterical efforts of the Montana Media when they discovered (probably through leaks from the GOP muckrakers) that his incumbent opponent, Mr. Walsh, had not given proper credit to someone he cited in his thesis many years ago. (Never mind that the school didn't catch, but many years later the GOP did.)  That nearly caused the media to wet their pants in route to handing Zenke the victory.  (Note to future candidates:  Don't ever let the media tag you as a plagiarizer.)

 

So, we now have two Montana rubber stamps - one in the U.S. House and one in the U.S. Senate.

 

And that makes two "shame on us" mistakes as voters.

 

Let's try to rectify that when they come up for re-election.