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Some Montana Politics for the Week

It’s been a busy week here at Casa del MTPolitics. I think that the Good Lord gives us a forgetful gene so that we don’t remember how rough it is getting newborns on a feeding schedule that doesn’t stick to hours that only Dracula and Charlie Sheen can appreciate.¹ If we remembered, we probably wouldn’t reproduce. Although, that would most likely make some people quite happy.

Most of what you are going to read in this post is a condensed (and probably de-babble-ized) version of this week’s podcast, so I’m repeating myself, but being a blogger, that’s what I do best: repeat myself; say the same things over and over again.

First item this week, I was honored to attend this meeting at the request of our long-time friend and all-around remarkable lady, Karen Hergenrider. The whole experience was rather illuminating, to say the least. The article was light enough on content to make me wonder if the author had attended the same meeting. Having said that, though, there were a couple of points that I took away that I felt was the real content of the meeting.

1.) Karen and the Morgans took a big one “for the team,” and the team hasn’t appeared to be real appreciative.

2.) The problem still exists, and is in the middle of (as Karen put it) a “political pissing match.”

3.) The whole “brucellosis free” thing is a real Charlie Foxtrot. It hardly makes sense to me that a small potential outbreak in one county could cause the entire state to lose “Brucellosis-Free” status. In case you hadn’t notice, it’s a pretty big gorram state, and it makes absolutely zero sense that, potentially, something that happens in Westby could affect ranchers in Lima.

Later that day, I was able to take part in a conference call with Senator Tester with other Montana bloggers: Jay Stevens and Dana of 4 & 20 Blackbirds.

The format of the conference call was simple, and involved an opening statement from Senator Tester, then we got to ask him some questions in a round-robin fashion.

In case I haven’t already mentioned it 6 million times, we’re pretty sleep-deprived around here, so I was rather ill-prepared for a full-fledged Q&A. The biggest question I asked related, naturally, to the meeting I’d attended with Karen earlier in the day. I reiterated the points Karen had made in the meeting, and asked what he thought he could do to help out.

He replied that he and Senator Baucus were working to get research money, and try to get folks together from both sides of the issue (wildlife and livestock) to figure out how to get the disease managed, with minimal impact for either.

I also asked about the sunsetting of the Internet access tax, and he said that we could “take it to the bank” that he would fight against the taxation of Internet access.

My third question was kind of embarrassing. Did I mention earlier that I’ve been sleep-deprived? And that I was ill-prepared? Regardless, Senator Tester answered it with aplomb and humor.

Lest anyone think this is a love fest, I found much to disagree with. However, I do applaud Senator Tester and his staff for reaching out to both sides of the aisle. Now that we’ve got the first one under our belt, we’ll better know how to handle the next one.

And who knows? Maybe some of my invited colleagues from the dextra will actually show up! (Sorry, Gregg, I couldn’t resist.)