Our Officers
Lavon Brillhart, Chair
228 W. Morse St., Dillon, MT 59725
(406) 683-2860
Louise Bruce, Vice-Chair
616 E. Center St., Dillon, MT 59725
(406) 683-4467
Jane Maddock, Secretary
P.O. Box 1386, Dillon, MT 59725
(406) 683-2548
Richard Turner, Treasurer
335 S. Dakota St., Dillon, MT 59725
(406) 683-6247
Guess What, We Can Do A Lot Better Than Denny Rehberg!
Dennis McDonald, Tyler Gernant, and Melinda Gopher will compete in the Democratic primary next year. The winner will then run against Republican Denny Rehberg in the general election for Montana's sole seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Until the election is concluded, our website will spend considerable space on the congressional race. We've created pages (see tabs above) for our Democratic candidates and one for Rehberg.
We're not unbiased, of course. We want either McDonald, Gernant, or Gopher to win. So the Rehberg page is chiefly devoted to reasons why he needs to go.
The candidates' pages will evolve as their campaigns evolve. They're still pretty undeveloped.
When a huge bus, bearing the words "Tell Congress You Don't Want a Government Takeover of Health Care," rolled into town on August 16th, it was met by about thirty supporters of the message and six Beaverhead Democrats.
The main speaker to climb off the bus was Jake Eaton, former executive director of the Montana Republican Party. He is "former" executive director because he was forced to resign his position in 2008 when it was revealed that he had operated a voter-suppression scheme.
Eaton offered up the usual right-wing canards: the government wants to get between you and your doctor; there'll be "death panels" in the form of government bureaucrats deciding who gets medical care and who doesn't; "Obamacare" equals socialism. In general, Eaton implied repeatedly, government is bad.
(Left) Mike Mosolf, Mary Jo O'Rourke, and George Johnston stand in front of the for-profit-health-insurance-sponsored bus to show that not everyone in town can be taken in by horse sh*t
When right-wingers attack "Obamacare," they're usually referring to HR 3200. It's the House bill that supposedly prescribes Death Panels and covers illegal immigrants.
Some of those attacking HR 3200, like Michael Weible in the Dillon Tribune of Sept. 16, refer to page numbers of the bill and pretend to summarize what's on these pages. The problem is that their summaries have little to do with what's actually on the pages to which they supposedly refer.
You can test this for yourself by comparing what Mr. Weible says is in the bill with the bill itself. To do this, go here.
To begin, you might notice how pages 425-30 have absolutely nothing to do with "death panels," as Mr. Weigle alleges.
It's easy, of course, for those wanting to mischaracterize HR 3200 to pull phrases out of context and distort their meaning.
This is precisely what Mr. Weible, or the Internet source he's borrowing from, does. Claiming that page 30 of the bill establishes "a private committee with a panel of 9 experts (selected by the President) [to] recommend your HC plan, benefits, and treatments to be covered," Mr. Weible alleges that "you will have no choice in your plan!"
What page 30 actually mentions is a "private-public advisory committee" that would "recommend" what minimum benefits would be included in basic, enhanced, and premium insurance plans. There is nothing here about restricting a consumer's choice of plans.
