Our Frustrated, Bitter Anger

Trapper Peak near Darby

You know, I’m just mad that this country is so fucked up.
 
Take the story about Montana pharmacists and state health officials that was on MTN yesterday.
 
It seems these folks want to buy generic prescription drugs, not name-brand prescription drugs.
 
Why?
 
“Because it could save taxpayers like you millions of dollars.”
 
Sadly, taxpayers like us – not to mention these stressed-out healthcare officials and frontline workers – can’t get those generic drugs.
 
A big stumbling block in this area is Jon Tester.
 
You’ll remember that Tester voted against importing cheaper prescription drugs from Canada.
 
That was early-January and now 4 months later we see the burden his vote has caused.
 
But it wasn’t just his vote – tons of Democrats in the District of Criminals voted to make your life harder when it comes to drug prices.
 
Hell, Montana Democrats even had one of those Democrats – a guy from New Jersey, no less – come and speak at their $49,000 Mansfield-Metcalf dinner.
 
So it’s frustrating.
 
It’s frustrating to be a common Montana worker and see things like this.
 
It makes you bitter, seeing our state struggle to get ahead after our congressional representatives throw us under the bus like that.
 
And my God is it frustrating to see Montana Democrats fall lock-step behind Tester’s 2018 reelection efforts.
 
I mean, he’s voted to keep prescription drug prices high!
 
This is making the lives of countless Montanans more difficult!
 
But by God, ol’ Jonny Boy’s gotta win that third term.
 
Hence the bitter, frustrated anger that you and I feel so often these days.
 

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I’m sorry that you’ve got to come here to this site to read this kind of talk.
 
Why aren’t others up in arms over the state of this country, our corrupt politicians, and a system that never seems to change?
 
I can’t help but think it’s because they’re profiting from that corrupt and despicable system.
 
Take MT Cowgirl blog.
 
Kyle Schmauch gave us the news on May 3.
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You might remember that Schmauch was hired by Daniel Zolnikov shortly after the 2014 elections to serve as his legislative staffer.
 
Since then he’s moved up from the legislature to a field rep for Steve Daines and now to media specialist for State Auditor Matt Rosendale.
 
And now he’s telling us that MT Cowgirl and Quist’s staffers are the same people.
 
Kinda makes sense.
 
Rumor had it that Eric Stern was forced to step down from the reins of MT Cowgirl in January when he moved from the outgoing Linda McCullough Secretary of State Office to the Governor’s Office.
 
Supposedly Steve Bullock laid down the law on his staffers running anonymous blogs, which is smart – anonymous attack blogs do little more than create problems for those doing the attacks.
 
Or is that not the case?
 
Because I think Cowgirl has been up and running for damn-near a decade, but in all that time the state has only gotten redder and the legislature more out of reach to Democrats than ever.
 
Perhaps that was the plan.
 
Eric Stern is an East Coast liberal, and when you dig into Montana Democratic Party finances you see that most of their money goes back to liberal East Coast firms.
 
Quite the strategy, eh?
 
Move to Montana, start a propaganda site, slowly change moderate Dem thinking to more East Coast Dem thinking, see the state get more red, ramp up the attacks, see the anger and vitriol rise up, and use all of that as justification for demanding donations from Montana Democratic voters so that money can be steered back to friend-firms on the East Coast.
 
Helluva strategy, and Montana Democratic voters bought it hook, line and sinker.
 
When Stern had to leave, it was a simple matter to get some of those East Coast Dem staffers at MT Dem HQ in Helena to take over the site.
 
How could they know that little more than a month later they’d be called upon to run Rob Quist’s campaign?
 
Most everyone was betting it’d be Curtis, after all.
 
But no worries.
 
Quist proved to be quite incompetent politically and from the very start (remember the gun registration comments?).
 
This allowed the full takeover of the campaign by the East Coast Dem staffers, which ensured they’d have their hands on the purse strings, the social media organs, and the itinerary.
 
As you know, things have only gone downhill for Quist since this has happened, a date I pretty much put as March 5, when he won the nomination.
 
But for the 8 staffers (who will make $68,000 by the time the campaign is over) as well as the countless East Coast firms, things have been going incredibly well.
 
Win…lose…either way they make money.
 
This ain’t football, folks – no one gets fired from their job if it’s a losing season.
 
In fact, as we’ve seen with Montana Democratic Party Executive Directory Nancy Keenan, her pay has increased.
 
So it’s frustrating.

 
Anyways, no new posts have gone up on Cowgirl since Schmauch sent out that tweet 4 days ago now.
 
I suppose it’s a little damage control mode and ‘wait and see’ from the Dem staffers there in Helena.
 
After a week though they’ll continue on with their main game plan for situations like this – ignore it and plow on full steam ahead.
 
I’m assuming that’ll be the strategy when Quist loses in 18 days and the Party has about 2 to 3 weeks before their convention.
 
The convention is a big deal because it allows Montana Democratic delegates to vote on new leadership for the state Party.
 
It’s no mistake that you haven’t heard anything about this convention – the Party brass doesn’t want you to know about it.
 
Yeah, they’re busy with the special election, but that’s just a good excuse to keep you looking the other way.
 
They sure don’t want you looking at their dismal 2016 election performance, or their monthly finance reports since then.
 
They already have to deal with a bunch of new rural delegates that Quist created, delegates that might not be so warm to the idea of business as usual.
 
When Quist loses they’ll be thinking that way even more.
 
So maybe leadership will be replaced, and if so…then what? (and let's not discount that the convention may be cancelled altogether this year, <insert canned-reason here>)
 
You can put new leaders in there, but unless they have some kind of game plan for changing the current status quo (both within the Party and the current makeup of the legislature) what good will it do?
 
I can’t help but think of Trump, and even Gianforte when I say this.
 
Both are businessmen yet both seem to have ditched one of the most important things in business: the business plan.
 
That’s usually how you start out and create yourself a map to success.
 
I hope the people that replace Jim Larson and Nancy Keenan clean house, cut staff, and minimize operations.
 
We’ve seen that the Montana GOP is spending about $2,000 a month on their one staffer while the Montana Democrats spend $26,000 for their 8 staffers.
 
And the Montana GOP is winning, hands down.
 
It’s frustrating to see those that are supposed to help your life only out working to help themselves.
 
The nice thing is that we know Montana moves in cycles, as does much of the world.
 
Up, down…boom, bust…the seasons change and the pendulum swings.
 
So while I have a deep and bitter, frustrated anger about our current situation, I know that one day it’ll change.
 
I think it’s changing right now, in fact.
 
There’s a lot to be confident about. Remember, in a few years – maybe 10 – most of these people we’re talking about will be gone.
 
Montana history is ripe with such tales and personas.
 
What’s important to us today won’t be tomorrow, and what we could care less about today might be very important in the future.
 
And we’ll see the same stories again and again, perhaps the names changed but that’s about it.
 
Heck in 1974 Democratic Governor Tom Judge illegally shot an elk and turned himself in.
 
Now we have Gianforte doing the same thing.
 
Oh, I know that Gianforte only cares about making himself and his friends more money, hopefully at the expense of you and your family.
 
I won’t vote for him.
 
But you know, I thought Democrats were supposed to be better than that.
 
It doesn’t seem like they are – remember the prescription drug story we kicked off this post about?
 
That’s probably why I’ll vote for Mark Wicks in 18 days.
 
My life ain’t gonna change with a D or R in there, that’s for sure!
 
I think common Montana voters will mostly be like France is today, though – lots of people simply not voting.
 
They know it doesn’t matter and that nothing ever changes.
 
Common Montanans are pretty smart. They can see what’s going on.
 
And so they wait, scanning the horizon for that one person that’ll eventually come along to tell it to ‘em like it is.
 
Won’t matter if it’s a D or an R or a what-have-you.
 
When that person comes along and tells it like it is in a frank and no-nonsense and so-what-if-I-offend-you kinda way, my God it’ll be a sight to see.
 
So until then, hang in there.