Archive for the 'Rehberg' Category

Continuing a series on reviewing candidates based on their websites, we will be looking at all the candidates who have filed for Montana’s at large congressional seat. The format will be the same as the previous editions and only those candidates listed on the state filing site will be reviewed.

Note: The purpose of this series is based on the notion that a number of voter’s will use candidate websites to help make a decision. The same as with consumers, these voters are apt to only spend a short time period looking for information and this series is an evaluation of how the candidates present themselves and their platforms. In short I am asking the question “Does the candidate’s website serve the purpose of providing easily accessible information to the voter?”

Jim Hunt (D): The very first thing that I noticed about Jim Hunt’s site is the familiarity of the color and atmosphere and soon realized that it put me in mind of a certain other maverick’s site. Overall, the site is inviting, clean, crisp and easily navigable. Hunt’s site is broken down into sections like ‘About Jim’, ‘Contact’, ‘Press Releases’ and the all important ‘Issues’ section.

About Jim: Here the reader gets very quick facts about Mr Hunt. In a few short sentences we learn about his military service, education, affiliation with the NRA and Episcopal church as well as his career as a consumer lawyer. Compact and easily digestible, this section will serve well for those with a short attention span.

In The News: Here the reader gets to see some headlines relating to Hunt’s congressional bid. This type of section can provide extremely useful for voters seeking more information about the candidate. Currently, there are many listings from a variety of sources. From blogs to newspapers, this section will provide the interested voter with a spring board to begin independent candidate research.

Issues: This is the most useful section of any candidate website and is generally the most logical place to see how a candidate’s position lines up with yours. Jim Hunt has a very thorough issues page covering topics like Iraq, Health Care, Public Lands, Veterans, Gun Rights, Privacy and Stem Cell Research. A large picture of himself in his USMC combat gear will score credibility points on topics like Iraq, Veterans and Gun Control. All in all, I was able to easily find information on every topic important to me as a voter with the exception of conservation, which was actually covered under the topic ‘Energy’.

Press Releases: Much like the ‘In The News’ sections, this type of section can provide a very useful place to provide more detailed information for the voter. While this may be used more effectively in the future, Jim Hunt’s site only lists four press releases currently.

Overall Impression: If I were a voter just beginning the process of researching a candidate, I would find Jim Hunt’s site easy to use and effective at giving me the tools to begin making a decision.

Dennis Rehberg (R): The first thing that I noticed about Dennis Rehberg’s site is that there is a video that starts on autoplay and does not have any visible controls to stop it from playing (after a few minutes, I discovered that I could right click and uncheck the ‘Play’ menu item to make it stop). This will be a major turn off to many voters who are not interested in watching video. Perhaps they are in a library, at work or just watching TV and an auto playing video can cause problems. The next thing I noticed is that the site contains exactly one section: Donate.

Overall Impression:Other than a short letter, there is absolutely no information for the interested voter. In a departure, I am including a screen capture to demonstrate the sparseness of Denny Rehberg’s website. This website is useless for the voter, unless ‘Donate’ is the only information he cares to pass along.

Robert Candee (D): First impressions of Robert’s site is that it is crisp and clean in appearance, with photos that basically shout ‘Agriculture’. The text of the front page actually conveys a lot of useful information on Robert’s background, priorities and qualifications. It doesn’t get much easier to find information than that. In addition, Candee’s site is broken up into useful sections like ‘Personal Background’ , ‘Platform’ and ‘Gallery’.

Personal Background: This is actually the same as the front page, which was a little confusing and caused me to click several times waiting for something new. As I said above though, there is a lot of good information here.

Platform: Much like the images on this front page, his platform screams Agriculture, as it is by far the largest section with charts and graphs. This is positive, as it is most likely the information that he most wants to share with voters. Additional topics covered include Health Care, Immigration, Renewable Energy and Ethics. There is more than enough information here to give the voters a reasonable idea of Candee’s platform.

Gallery: While this section is missing from the other candidate’s sites, galleries are useful sections for letting voters feel a little more like they know the candidate. While it may seem more shallow than textual representations, human’s are visual. Seeing how a candidate interacts with others and the scenes they choose to portray can provide valuable context for the voters while considering candidates. In this case, I am not sure that Candee’s choice of imagery will convey a sense of congressional stature, which could distract from the effectiveness of the page.

Other Interests: Here Robert presents a little more context about himself, his views on alternative energy as well as public service work he has performed.

Overall Impression: Candee’s sight has some formatting issues, but is a good source for getting a broad picture his platform and qualifications. The technical problems with the site lie in the fact that it uses frames, which makes it impossible for me to provide links to the specific sections. Another interesting part is that there is no path to making a donation to Candee’s campaign, which will likely lead voters to question the seriousness of Candee’s campaign.

Mike Fellows (L): The first thing I notice about Mike Fellow’s site is the large banner proclaiming that “The Second Amendment Is Not About Hunting”. The second thing I noticed is that the short paragraphs of text actually do provide a quick and easy overview of Mike’s platform and intentions. The third thing I notice is a picture of Mike standing next to a stunning VW van. The general appearance of the site is pleasing enough but has some formatting issue in the navigation bar. The site does include several useful sections, such as ‘About Us’, ‘The War On Alternative Medicine’ and ‘News’.

About Us: This section might be misnamed, as it is really only about Mike as a singular man. This section give a little information on Mr Fellows and then it gets a little confusing. Under the title ‘Facts’ there is a sentence that says “A rating Gun Owners Of America”, but there is no indication of what that rating might be. There is also some useful information on Mike’s party affiliation.

Reduce Spending: This section provides the potential voter with some information on Mike’s fiscal policy.

Media: It is at this point that the observant voter might make note that this site is simply recycled from Mike’s previous run at the house, noting pictures of Monica Lindeen’s bus. Most of the pictures show Mike holding a sign by himself, very small groups of people and parade entries. As with Robert, I am not sure that this page will display a sense of congressional stature.

The War On Alternative Medicine: A short paragraph on Fellow’s view on alternative medicine.

News: This page provides a list of headlines along with useless links. For instance, there is the headline “Fellows responds to health research” with a link here. A search of that site shows absolutely no results for Mike Fellows. This type of thing will be very distracting to voters looking for real information.

Overall Impression Mike Fellow’s candidate website is laid out differently than one might expect. Instead of an ‘Issues’ section, he has important issues listed as their own sections. Besides being short on content, it is also severely outdated.

In Summary: For general appearance, all the sites are OK and have their relative strengths. For content, Dennis Rehberg’s site is the hands down loser and Jim Hunt’s the hands down winner. Where each of the other candidates site’s will provide useful information for perspective voters, Rehberg’s site will provide none.

While I don’t do it often, I occasionally write to my representatives voicing my opinions on the issues. I don’t want to be the creepy weirdo that writes them once a week about how the networks are beaming gamma rays into my house at night, but I voice my opinion when I think it is important. In the past years, I think I have written them on mountain top mining and the General Patraeus/MoveOn.org embarrassment. I even published Tester’s response letter here, where I noted how impressed I was with the thought, time and energy someone had put into the letter. It really addressed the issue and several of the topics that I had mentioned. While it may have been a form letter, it actually felt more like someone had taken the time to customize the talking points in response to what I had said. Even if it was strictly form mail, I left the experience with the feeling that my voice had been heard and considered. I have had similar experiences with responses from Baucus.

Tonight I saw a curious subject line in my inbox. It said “Reply from Congressman Denny Rehberg”, which was more than enough to pique my interest. I clicked. Here is what I found:

November 29, 2007
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Shane Mason
XXX Some Street
Helena, Montana 59602
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Dear Shane :
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Thank you for contacting my office. I appreciate you taking the time to
bring your concerns and suggestions to my attention. The best
information I receive comes directly from constituents in Montana .
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Should you have any further comments , questions or problems in dealing
with any aspect of the federal government, please feel free to call me.
My toll free number is (888) 232-2626 and the Washington, D.C. office
number is (202) 225-3211.
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Thanks again for contacting me. For further information or to sign up
for my e-newsletter, please visit my website at www.house.gov/rehberg .
Please keep in touch.
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Sincerely,
Denny Rehberg
Montana’s Congressman

What did I contact him about? Wouldn’t know from the letter. I have contacted him twice without a response, but the last time was August 26th. Tester’s detailed response came 10 days later, Baucus in about two weeks, both directly addressing my points. Out of no where Rehberg’s office emails me to say that he appreciates me bringing up my [comment|question|problem] and that the best information he gets comes from Montana, yet he doesn’t take the time to address my [comment|question|problem]? I am not even sure if he is addressing this one, or one from years ago. Boy, I feel like my voice counts here.

Know what I think? I think that he was just emailing me to let me know that he knows where I live and how to find me. A shot across the bow, if you will. If I keep this blogging thing up, he might have the networks beam gamma rays into my house at night…

A new poll released by Montana State University-Billings showed some pretty interesting numbers. Here they are distilled:

Schweitzer:
Approve: 63%
Disapprove: 18%
Undecided: 19%

Baucus:
Approve: 64%
Disapprove: ~18%
Undecided: ~18%

Tester:
Approve: 57%
Disapprove: 16%
Undecided: 27%

Rehberg:
Approve: 59%
Disapprove: 17%
Undecided: 24%

Now, there are a few interesting take away points here.

1. Montanan’s love their governor and senior member of the Senate. Brown and company beware.

2. While Tester is doing well for this early in the game, there is a lot of room for things to go south for him. I am a little surprised by this number, expecting more of a bitter feeling to linger after the last election.

3. While Rehberg is doing well, he doesn’t seem to have left much of an impression on people for this late in the game. There is a lot of room for things to go south for him, and I fully expect that those numbers will quickly dwindle when they were pitted with a viable alternative next November.

4. The core of the Montana Republic party is smaller than I had assumed. It looks to me to be around 16 to 18% (Note: Republic party is not a typo, if they cant take the time to say the last two letter of my party’s name, neither can I)

In support of number 3 above, consider the states support for the Iraq war:

The poll found that only 35 percent of Montanans surveyed now support the decision to go to war in Iraq. About 58 percent oppose that decision, up from 48 percent in both 2005 and 2006 in the same poll.

Let us all take this time to remember that Rehberg has voted in lockstep with Bush on this issue since day one. Also, consider that Bush had an 87% approval rating in 2001 but has slipped to 35% now. Can you say ’sinking ship’? Good. I knew you could.

These numbers would be good ones for Tester and Baucus to remember too:

63 percent say the country is moving in the wrong direction; 19 percent say it’s moving in the right direction.

We want change, not rhetoric.

Seems like the Iraq War was the big loser in Montana.

Both Helena’s and Missoula’s anti-Iraq war referendums won decisively with majority numbers - Helena’s taking nearly 62% of support, and Missoula with almost 65%!

Reaffirming Helena’s anti-Iraq War referendum vote was the dismissal of the anti-anti Iraq War referendum - a call to give Bush a blank check, with no conditions, for funding of the Iraq war - by a slightly-less than the nearly 62% support the anti-Iraq war referendum received.

Only two cities, I know, but I’ll take the time to point out that both are over 60% threshold…..

7 U.S. forces were killed on Monday.

3857 U.S. forces have been killed in Iraq.

2007 has been the deadliest year.

853 U.S. forces have died this year.

118 U.S. forces have been killed since September 1st.

The worse previous year was 2004, with 849 U. S. forces killed.

24 Sons of Montana have died.

How many more?

Email Rep. Dennis Rehberg and tell him “Not One More!”

Email Sen. Max Baucus and tell him “Not One More!”

Email Sen. Jon Tester and tell him “Not One More!”

Support our U.S. forces by bringing them home.

We all know what a junket is and what a fact finding trip is. Those sound boring, I want to hear more about what Dennis Rehberg was doing in February 2005, that sounds more interesting to me. Supposedly, it was one of those boring fact finding junket things:

The stated purpose of the congressional delegation — dubbed a CODEL in Capitol Hill speak — was to focus on “resource-based issues such as biodiversity, wildlife conservation programs, park lands, energy issues, timber and forestry management, world heritage sites, mining, multiple land use, and implementation of U.S. assistance programs overseas, particularly those of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.”

It sounds a lot more fun when you dive into the details

34 travelers plus an Air Force Boeing 737 and its crew of seven - that journeyed to some of the most desirable tourist destinations in the Western Hemisphere in February of 2005.
[snip]
The final 11-day itinerary took the group to the Panama Canal, to Buenos Aires for touring and a tango show as well as brief official meetings at their hotel, then to the southernmost tip of the continent for a boat outing to see the famed penguins of Tierra del Fuego, then to the water falls of Iguazu in Brazil and a foray into the Amazon jungle.

Sounds like a lot of fun. Useful? Fact finding? Not so much.

“In my 27 years with the Department (of State) I’ve seen some codels that are boondoggles, but this one is really egregious,” Dianne Graham, information officer at the U.S. embassy at Buenos Aires, e-mailed her colleagues. The itinerary all but guaranteed that “no work” would be done, she said.

I would like to feign outrage, shock and surprise. The truth is that it just isn’t in me tonight. This is what I have some to expect from Mr Rehberg. Mr Fiscal Responsible? Not so much. At least we can all be glad that there weren’t any horses and liquor involved.

I wrote about Rehberg’s money machine yesterday, where I mentioned a line in the Billing’s Gazette piece that seemed askew to me:

Both campaigns said more than 90 percent of their contributions came from Montana.

I made the claim that this seemed because Rehberg only 76% of his contributions came from in state last cycle. Why would that change now? Short answer? It wouldn’t. Take a look at his FEC disclosure forms and it is plain to see that someone is lying. Here are the real numbers:

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Someone is not telling the truth here. I see two possible scenarios. The reporter at Lee Newpapers did exactly what we are used to them doing, that is reprinting Rehberg press releases without being bothered to take the time to actually do any investigative reporting and check out the facts. If this is the case, the Rehberg camp has been patently dishonest and Lee Newspapers are only guilty of being lazy and not worth the paper they print on.

If the Rehberg camp did not make this claim, then Lee Newpapers would still be guilty of being lazy or of something much more sinister. However, if the Rehberg campaign did not make this claim, then wouldn’t you expect they would have had it retracted by now? I think that it is most likely that the former is true.

I find Rehberg’s supposed popularity to be extremely difficult to understand, but this shows that fundraising in this case does not equal support. I bet that Bill Kennedy could go out and get tons of PAC money from the likes of the American Electric Power PAC, American Gas Assn PAC, Bank of America Corporation PAC and DTE Energy Company PAC if he were willing to put their interests above the people of the state of Montana.

Craig has an interesting post pointing to this piece in the Billing Gazette which discusses fund raising in the Montana congressional election. As the piece points out, Rehberg is out pacing Democratic challenger Bill Kennedy, and Craig states his belief that

My hunch is that MT-01 is Denny’s for as long as he wants it, unless he gets caught eating babies or something like that.

Behind this is the implication that money is key in this election, and I would say that Craig is right about that. Both the three sentence analysis in Craig’s post and the 8 sentence article in the Gazette are missing context and framing. Consider Monica Lindeen’s 2006 challenge. She raised a grand total of 500,000 for the entire race, while Kennedy is already 2/5ths of the way there. Now, here is the clincher: the election is still a full year away! It isn’t even really primary season yet and Kennedy is pulling in quiet a bit of money. There is something to be said for that.

Now, there is an interesting line in the article that deserves a second look.

Both campaigns said more than 90 percent of their contributions came from Montana.

Looking back over the 2006 election, Rehberg on took 76% from in state contributions. Either there is something wrong with the 90% figure or Dennis waits until later in the cycle to get the out of state dollars. Maybe PAC’s and other special interest groups don’t give until until later in the season, noting that is where Rehberg got 40% of his war chest in the 2006 election.

I wrote a little piece the other day pointing out that Denny Rehberg so often talks up the free market but only when it is beneficial to certain industries. The words ‘free market’ must have hit and alarm in Dave Budge’s text filter, because he showed up straight away and went to town telling me that I don’t know anything about economics.

So, after a long back-and-forth, I grew weary and I promised Dave that I would answer a question in a post of it’s own. Welcome to that post, glad you could make it. The central issue was allowing Medicare to negotiate on prescription drug prices. While we argued back and forth on whether Medicare was a monopsony ( a market with only one buyer ). Dave refused to concede that this was not the case and that I had failed to show a “dominating list of buyers that would push the industry past monopsonistic competion”, even though I pointed to insurance plans and the fact that France and Germany both spent more on drugs than Medicare, not to mention a long list of countries that purchased high fractions of Medicare’s budget. Dave just answered by making this point and demanding that I answer it:

U.S. pharma produces roughly 70% of all pharmaceutical innovations in the world. According to a report by the AMA last year, U.S. consumers subsidize roughly 20% of the price of exported drugs to countries that impose price controls _ pretty much the list that you mention above. In the same report the AMA urged the Dept. of Commerce to pressure those countries to “share the burden of innovation” buy opening up the markets so it wasn’t entirely on the backs of U.S. consumers.
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What you’re proposing will eviscerate the development of new drug technologies. So, when I ask you who it will help and who it will hurt you fall back on a superficial argument of the short run. In the context of this market - which funds the vast majority of clinical research and innovation, the U.S oligopsony is real as to practical effects inasmuch it’s the last relatively free market that exists and the source of profits that fund innovation. But I guess you don’t give a shit about that.

I thought that this might take me a bit of time to research and answer appropriately, but it turns out that my Google-foo is still pretty good and I came up with this piece [website, PDF ] that answers the question well enough for me. What Dave is saying here is that if the government pays less for drugs by negotiating in the free market, then it will “eviscerate the development of new drug technologies”. The answer to that:

Fact 1: Drug companies are already spending more than twice as much on marketing
and advertising as on R&D.
In 2004, pharmaceutical companies spent, on average, nearly one-third (32 percent) of revenues on marketing, administration and advertising, compared with 14 percent on R&D.
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Fact 2: The drug industry is one of the most profitable industries in the country.
In 2005, the pharmaceutical industry kept 15.7 percent of revenue as profit, making it the fifth most profitable industry in the country. The industry’s high rates of return leave enough room for a significant reduction of drug prices without harming R&D.3
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Fact 3: New ‘breakthrough’ drugs, the costliest to develop, actually account for only a small proportion of medicines produced by drug companies.
The majority of drugs that the pharmaceutical industry develops each year are so-called “me too” drugs—modified forms or new uses of existing drugs, which incur lower R&D costs, such as the development of similar drugs following Gleevec, a breakthrough cancer drug.
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Fact 4: The industry exaggerates the role of private drug companies in the R&D of ‘breakthrough’ drugs.
Taxpayer-funded research, particularly by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), forms a significant foundation for R&D by private drug companies. Most of the important new drugs introduced by the drug industry in the past 40 years were developed with some contribution from the public sector. Only 5 out of the 21 most influential drugs introduced between 1965 and 1992
were developed entirely by the private sector.
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Fact 5: Lowered drug prices would likely spur demand.
Public Citizen cites a study indicating that cutting drug prices by 40 percent for people with Medicare would have a minimal effect on profits due to increased demand. Furthermore, lowered drug prices would induce companies to boost R&D for new drugs to sustain themselves, since the industry depends on research to come out with new and “potentially lucrative” medicines.6

All of these make a lot of sense to me. I find it patently absurd to suggest that lowering the price that Medicare pays one of the most profitable industry in the world would somehow make them shutdown and stop making new product. Note that Dave pointed out the fact that big pharma claims that they must charge us higher prices because they are selling drugs at lower costs to other nations. Do Dave and big pharma expect me to buy that argument when their profit margin is a matter of public record?

Now look back at Dave’s statement and note this:

In the context of this market - which funds the vast majority of clinical research and innovation, the U.S oligopsony is real as to practical effects inasmuch it’s the last relatively free market that exists and the source of profits that fund innovation.

I actually am privy to a bit of knowledge that this is not the case, and it was pointed out in the PDF referenced above. The simple fact is that the government puts a lot of money into drug R&D each year.

A National Institutes of Health (NIH) internal document, dated February 2000 and obtained by Public Citizen earlier this year, showed that all the top five selling drugs in 1995 received significant taxpayer backing in the discovery and development phases. Investigations by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Boston Globe also have examined samples of medically important and top-selling drugs and found that a vast majority of drugs in each group received government support.

I’ll end with the one point that pisses Dave off more than any others. You see, Dave hates the ‘rule of the masses’, or Democracy as I like to call it. One reason to allow Medicare to negotiate for prescription drug prices is because 86% of Americans think that it should.

Now, if you grow weary of this debate, go over to Left in the West and read Matt’s take on the argument.

[UPDATE: I had left out a link to the PDF document from The Medicare Rights Center I referenced above. Those links are now in place.]

Free market voters are being lied to. Denny Rehberg has been a vocal proponent of ‘the free market’, but I am not so sure that his record really backs that up.

Healthcare

Denny Rehberg called the government ran SCHIPs program an “extremist political ideology” to expand government-run health care, ostensibly because it is not a free market solution. He has made the claim several times that free market principals are the answer to our health care problem. However, Denny Rehberg voted no on allowing Medicare to negotiate on prescription drug prices, just like any entity in the free market would do to keep prices low. Instead of voting to allow Medicare to adopt some policies that would make it operate more like every free market entity out there, he chose to vote against free market style reforms.

Energy

When it comes to talking points, Denny Rehberg likes to say things like “free market-economy hinges on open and competitive markets”, he voted no to a bill that would have ended subsidies to oil companies. When it comes to alternative fuels though, I see that he voted no to raising CAFE standards and providing incentives to for alternative energy. How is that an ‘open and competitive market’? On one hand, he supports subsidies to big oil (going against the idea of a ‘free market’) but on the other hand has repeatedly rejected offering incentives for alternative fuels.

to be continued…

With all the news over Senator Larry Craig what is missed is at what cost? To begin with, he will receive his retirement to the tune of some $136,000 dollars a year. So it must not go unnoticed that the crime does not fit the outcome very well does it?

Had it been a felony rather than a misdemeanor then this would not be the case. However, he will able to continue his lifestyle in whatever manner he chooses and we as taxpayers will pick up the bill.

Speaking of costs, there were some 1,800 civilians killed over the past month in Iraq. In one instance the cost of life was 500 in just one incident.

And then there is my own battle with the VA’s disability rating board. I just found out that my Agent Orange cancer disability payments have been reduced from 100% to 20% which is not only a huge deduction (like $2,000) because the people who oversee the veterans benefits have concluded that I am cancer free after just one year of remission but they can’t explain the huge loss of weight which is well over 100 pounds, the night-sweats, the sleepless nights that come in one to two hour blocks, the diminished lung capacity, the hoarseness of the vocal cords due to damage by chemicals used to kill the cancer and of course the huge loss of revenue because I was too sick to work.
Am I battling to fight this and do the right thing, Yes - But keep in mind that when you take on the VA you are appealing to the same people who determine what you do or do not get in terms of disability compensation. I’ve taken the steps of seeking help from both of our Senators (Bacus, Tester) and Congressman Reberg but that as I am sure most realize takes time and money both of which I do not have.
Clearly my medical records (both past and present) show that the side effects of the cancer are presenty even today but just try to prove to them that you are trying to do the right thing when it is clear that the government are more concerned with their own set of values and protecting their nest eggs to worry about the plight of the veteran.

Not long ago I was asked to share my experiences with the effects of service related health issues and you can trust that I shall. Why? Because this whole affair just simply is NOT fair. It IS about more than money it is about doing the right things for the right reasons.

Can they say the same?

The Senate voted to expand SChips on Thursday evening. Though Bush has threatened to veto the bill in the past, it was passed with a super-majority vote. Why? Well, most people in this country support universal health insurance, at a super-majority rate of 2 to 1. You can imagine that they sure as hell support healthcare for children.

Senators Jon Tester and Max Baucus both came out in support of the bill. I commend them on taking this important step for Montanan’s. Why is it so important to Montana? Only half of the employers in Montana offer health coverage and this leaves a lot of kids at risk.

The average cost of a family health plan on the open market in Montana is about $8,000 per year, Baucus said. That’s about a fifth of the income of a family of four making twice the poverty level, or $41,300.
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“CHIP offers affordable, comprehensive health coverage for working families,” Baucus said. “CHIP works and has helped thousands of Montana families.”
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The 2007 Montana Legislature increased the family income eligibility cutoff for CHIP from 150 percent of the federal poverty level to 175 percent. That’s a yearly income of just more than $36,000 for a family of four, Baucus said. That change will add 2,000 children next year, he said.

Rehberg, on the other hand did not vote for the house version of the bill. Why?

U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg on Wednesday voted against House Democrats’ bill to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as SCHIP, saying it’s based on an “extremist political ideology” to expand government-run health care.

By this line of thought, the American people follow “extremist political ideology” by a margin of 2 to 1? 66% of American’s are ‘extremists’?

In typical fashion, Dennis Rehberg wants to have it both ways, saying that he supports Chips, but does not support funding it. Additionally, he goes on to say that he did not vote to fund it because it would hurt senior citizens?

The House version funds the SCHIP expansion by increasing tobacco taxes and cutting $194 billion from the “Medicare Advantage” program, which are government payments to private insurance companies selling additional coverage plans for senior citizens on Medicare.
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The federal government generally reimburses insurance companies for those payments. Congressional budget officials have said the government is overpaying private companies for the costs.
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Rehberg said using the Medicare money to fund the SCHIP expansion is pitting senior citizens against kids in a battle for health care, and that 16,000 Montanans get coverage through Medicare Advantage.

The only problem with this logic is that the bill doesn’t take money from old people, it forces the ‘private insurance companies’ to stop bilking the government out of millions.

A Montana spokeswoman for AARP, the consumer group representing people 50 and over, said the group is “disappointed” with Rehberg’s vote. The measure actually strengthens Medicare programs for low-income seniors and reduces “excess payments” to private Medicare Advantage plans, said Pat Callbeck-Harper.

Thank you Jon Tester and Max Baucus for putting Montanan’s first. Dennis, I hope the insurance companies appreciate your work. Now we know where you all stand.

[Update 0] An interesting factoid on this one: According to MyDD, over half the GOP senators up for re-election this year voted against SChip. Hmmm.

What? Uhm yeah. Apparently since Colby pointed out the lack of conservative posters here at Montana Netroots, I have taken it on myself to become one. Not really, but I did read an interesting opinion piece in the IR today called Rehberg praised for medical pot.

For the most part, the piece focuses on the benefits of medical marijuana:

Marijuana’s medicinal value to Montana patients mirrors the modern scientific research findings that have steadily been documenting how miraculous marijuana really is. There are literally hundreds of scientific, peer-reviewed research papers that explain why Dr. Lester Grinspoon, of the Harvard Medical School, has written that “marijuana is safer than most medicines prescribed every day. If marijuana were a new discovery rather than a well-known substance carrying cultural and political baggage, it would be hailed as a wonder drug.”

But does contain this snippet:

Marijuana is truly a wonder drug, as Dr. Grinspoon has reported, and all the members of Patients & Families United are grateful to Montana voters for allowing us the right to follow our doctors’ advice in using it. We’re also thankful for Congressman Denny Rehberg’s favorable attitude toward an important issue commonly called the “Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment.” Denny has supported this vital amendment ever since Montana voters made their marijuana decision in 2004, and another House vote on this proposal is expected this week. It addresses the most important remaining threat that medical marijuana patients face.

Although medical marijuana is now legal under state and local law, the federal DEA continues to persecute patients and their caregivers. Very recently, the DEA confiscated a legal Montana patient’s medicine, causing unnecessary, unfair suffering. The Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment would stop the DEA from interfering in medical marijuana issues in states with policies like Montana’s. It’s a basic state’s rights issue, combined with compassion and a simple recognition of the science behind marijuana as medicine.

You see, I was unaware of the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, but if it does what this author claims, then I can give it my full support. You see, I have long viewed this as a state’s rights issue. If the voters of a state approve a law and that law does not conflict with the United States Constitution, then the federal government ought not be allowed to arrest people or interfere with the law abiding people of that state. It angers me that they have been allowed to do so thus far.

Regardless of how you feel about medical marijuana, the people of this state voted overwhelmingly in support of it. It is now legal in this state and since that does not violate the constitution, the federal government ought to respect that. If Rehberg shares these same views and supports this amendment, then good, we agree on something.