The profile shows how Priest used dark money to demonize Supreme Court candidates Ed Sheehy and Elizabeth Best in support of a TEA Party candidate.  Priest also used the dark money group to send out attack mailers to kill the Medicaid expansion.  Because of Priest’s actions, 70,000 of Montanan’s most disadvantaged working poor won’t be able to get health care. 

Beckel, who writes for the Center for Public Integrity, published the report on the heels of a new analysis by the National Institute on Money in State Politics that found Montana is one of 35 states where rules regarding the disclosure of political spending by independent groups are less stringent than federal election law.

There’s much more on this, so check out the links in Beckel’s story above.

Art Wittich, the Montana Senate Majority Leader and Tea Party stalwart, has been in court lately to try to get what he believes is rightfully his.

Wittich, a lawyer, had once provided legal services to a Bozeman couple. There was an outstanding balance of $93.99 that the couple had not paid Wittich.  Wittich was not going to abandon the matter, and not only collected the debt but got himself a tidy reward, an additional several thousand dollars.

It appears, as best I can tell from a not-very-clearly-drafted court opinion (the link to the decision is below), that Wittich quietly got a default legal judgment against the couple, for the $93.99, even as his office was in talks with the couple over possibly arriving at a settlement over this piddling amount of money.  After successfully getting the judgment, he began efforts to collect it.  After some time, he managed to persuade the court to award him not only the $93.99, but $2,900 more for “fees, costs and interests” that he claimed to have incurred as a result of spending his time trying to collect the $93.99.

A divided state Supreme Court, shockingly, upheld the judgment.  Justice Cotter dissented, calling the decision [UPDATED pdf] “unconscionable” and an “affront,” scolding Wittich for “financial carnage wreaked upon [the Bozeman couple] for their refusal to pay a disputed $93.”  Justice Baker grudgingly voted in favor of Wittich because there was apparently a contract, which Wittich had gotten the couple to sign, including a clause that allowed him, ultimately, to get this outrageous amount of money from them in the event of a collection action.  But Justice Baker strongly cautioned him to review the rules of the State Bar which address lawyers and their billing practices, and are designed to prevent lawyers from fleecing their clients.

And Cotter notes that when the dust finally settles, the couple will probably owe north of $5,000 to Wittich, because Wittich will try to recoup additional costs from them, namely, his costs in litigating the case of the $93.99 in front of the Supreme Court.

In essence, Whittich did what he could, not what he should.  Nice guy.

Oh, and one other point, which goes without saying: if Wittich ever thought he could run for statewide office, that dream he can now kiss goodbye.

Here’s the clip:

The Human Rights Network has done some research on this group, which calls itself the National Policy Institute.

In 2011, they held an event at the National Press Club to release its report called “Majority Strategy: Why the GOP Must Win White America.” The report urged the Republican Party to “reach in” to its base of white voters instead of “reaching out” to minorities. The report told the GOP to embrace immigration restrictions, end civil rights laws, and stop all forms of affirmative action.

The group’s leader, Richard Spencer, recently moved the group from Georgia to Whitefish. He says: “It is perfectly feasible for a white state to be established on the North American continent,” adding, “I have a dream.”

You’ll want to go read James Conner’s post on this, which is up at the Flathead Memo.

Cowgirl readers will recall that last year, Boniek was hauled into court to answer charges that he’d sped through a roadblock in defiance of an officer’s order to keep out. Boniek was trying to get to his house, but his house was in an area where a forest fire was burning and had been evacuated and blocked off due to the emergency. As a devoted Tea Partier and general wingnut, Boniek did not recognize the authority of the policeman to keep him away from his private property. Also, during his encounter with the officer before he crashed the barrier, Boniek allegedly reached for a gun that he had with him in the front seat. As the Livingston Enterprise reported, he:

“allegedly argued with the officers and eventually ‘dropped his left hand near what looked like a holster’ before a deputy brought him to the ground….The deputy removed a loaded handgun from the holster, according to court documents.”

For his day in court, Boniek brought with him an angry mob of supporters, who shouted down the Judge and Prosecutor in such a menacing way that they fled the courtroom fearing for their safety. At that point, Boniek stood up and proclaimed himself regent over the courtroom, and decreed himself innocent of all the charges (before the bailiff told him otherwise, while brandishing his own weapon).

Boniek, who is representing himself, has been asked to stop bringing up a number of frivolous and conspiracy-related arguments.

The first is “jury nullification” which is when a jury ignores the evidence and or instructions of the judge and returns a verdict of “Not Guilty” despite its belief that the defendant is guilty of the violation he or she is charged with. This appears to be a primary focus of Boniek’s self-defense, and the case is being closely followed by the jury nullification crew, as you can see from their press release on the case. He and his band of TEA Partiers have also been ordered not to distribute TEA Party pamphlets around the courthouse before the trial tomorrow, May 10.

During a hearing of his court case on Friday, the Livingston Enterprise reports, Boniek himself “lodged multiple complaints and objections, including that the court is fraudulent and that officials are treating him as an “artificial person” because his name appears in all capital letters on legal documents.”

He’s also accused the judge and everyone involved with the trial of being “fraudulent” so therefore his trial should not proceed. Boniek alleges that the judge will see personal financial benefit from his trial and any fines related to it.

Boniek is also angry with the Livingston Enterprise,who he has demanded show him every story they write about him before it is printed. The whole Enterprise article on the case’s latest developments is a must read.

Embattled TEA Party figure Tim Ravndal, who made headlines for his remarks that implied support for violence against gays, is floating a slate of candidates for GOP Chair and Vice Chair. Gary Carlson has already announced and put out a flyer listing his qualifications. Jennifer Fielder, a TEA Party legislator from Noxon with ties to the militia movement, is the second name.

In the past, the GOP has tried to give token support to the hard right wing of the party without actually letting them take full control. However, the battle we saw in the Montana legislature between the hard right leadership of Wittich, Priest, and Essmann and the more traditional GOP-ers is also likely to play out here.

McKenna added the following language to Missouri Senate Bill 437:

“Any person living in this state aged eight and under may wear seersucker suits at their leisure. Any person over the age of eight living in this state may not wear seersucker suits because adults look ridiculous in seersucker suits,”

While the Esquire blog in which this item first appeared has its own theory on the proposed ban, I’ll add mine here.  It’s already started to get quite warm in the south, and perhaps by banning comfortable clothing Sen. McKenna was hoping to get the GOP-controlled body out of town earlier before more damage could be done.  The 2013 session of the Missouri legislative assembly is scheduled to end May 17.

Bowen Greenwood, the head of the Montana GOP, has been hard at work tweeting about his exciting evening at home watching Les Miserables on DVD.

He even has a Hugh Jackman man-crush, describing him this way:

Alas poor Bowen is an outlier, and leads a party that might not share his tastes. Not so long ago, conservatives in America were renaming things like French Toast to “Freedom Toast” for their hatred of despicable France. The Tea Party despises France for many reasons, among them that the nation did not support our invasion of Iraq, and that all French citizens receive medical care. Tea Partiers do not go to see Les Mis, but rather Atlas Shrugged or Transformers 3.

And consider too that most Tea Partiers believe that to own a passport and visit France is to commit treason.

I worry that Bowen could be making himself vulnerable to accusations that he is a European Socialist, especially given that Les Miserable is about a revolution that germinated a socialist state, now hated by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

I wonder if Bowen might have had a little too much Merlot when he sent these tweets.

The Montana Family Foundation’s Jeff Laszloffy suffered a slew of losses this session, but perhaps none was felt so bitterly as his failure to get a parental consent legislative referendum on the ballot for 2014. The Family Foundation’s legislative referenda work was the organization’s major cash cow last election cycle.  Since Laszloffy failed to get the measure on the ballot for 2014, the Family Foundation’s ability to impact elections has now evaporated.

Cowgirl readers will recall that Governor Steve Bullock allowed Laszloffy’s unconstitutional bill to become law solely so that the bill can be struck down in Montana’s courts. As John Adams at The Lowdown reports, the move allows women to immediately challenge the measure in court long before an identical referenda passed by the legislature gets to the ballot in 2014.

Sure, Laszloffy knew that the measure was unconstitutional–everyone knew it. But Lazloffy’s purpose in pushing it was electoral, not policy-driven.

You see, last election cycle Laszloffy raised some $300,000–purportedly for the parental notification legislative referenda which was sent to the ballot by the 2011 legislature.    Montana Family Foundation’s Incidental Ballot Committee Reports in 2012 show they were able to raise and spend $320,000 in 2012.

In a typical year, the Family Foundation raises about $20,000 for electoral work.  But because of the LR, LR-120, they were able to raise more than 15 times that amount. You can see the reports below.

$18,000 May 8-May 24

$3,000 May 25-June 18

$2,000 June 19-July 3

$6,000 July 4 -Aug 3 

$29,000 Aug 4-Sept 3

$191,000 spent Sept 15-Oct 15

$3,000 spent Oct 16-Oct 25

$68,000 spent Oct 26-Nov 19

For one thing, this is money that could be used to supplant Family Foundation funds that had been going toward Laszloffy’s salary.  What’s also interesting is that the campaign finance reports for Laszloffy’s ballot committee  shows that some of the money he raised was leveraged to actually help the GOP’s top targeted legislative races–not just the ballot initiative.

Here’s a screenshot from his “incidental ballot committee’s” campaign report.  It reports the expenditure Lazsoffy made for a mailer that was about the ballot measure on one side, and a top tier targeted GOP race on the other.   This means that all of the polling and research Laszloffy did for these mailings was supporting the GOP’s legislative candidates too.

Thanks to Cowgirl tipsters for pointing out these fundraising anomalies. Reader tips are the essence of this blog. Send tips to mntnacowgirl (at) gmail.com