Tag Archive for: Montana

EXCLUSIVE: Gaetz To Campaign With Rosendale In Montana Ahead Of Potential Senate Bid

Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz will campaign alongside Montana GOP Rep. Matt Rosendale in the state next week ahead of his potential Senate bid, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

The two will attend campaign events together in Bozeman, Townsend and Helena on Friday and Saturday as Rosendale continues to weigh a challenge to Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, according to the congressman’s team. Rosendale commended Gaetz for helping him “battle the uniparty” in Congress, telling the DCNF in an exclusive statement “it is an honor” that he’s campaigning with him in Montana.

“Matt Gaetz has been my reliable ally as we battle the uniparty in Washington,” Rosendale told the DCNF. “Whether it’s fighting out-of-control spending, securing our border, or restoring regular order to Congress, Matt Gaetz has always been with me in the fight for our nation. It is an honor to have him join me in the Treasure State next week.”

If Rosendale runs, he’ll have to face former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy in the Republican primary. Sheehy was recruited to run by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, which has cited Rosendale’s 2018 loss to Tester as their reasoning for not tapping the congressman.

“Matt Rosendale is among the most reliable and determined conservatives I’ve ever met at any level of government,” Gaetz told the DCNF in a statement. “The Swamp doesn’t want Rosendale because they know Tim Sheehy will be their pawn. Montana can defeat the corrupt big spenders and open borders politicians. I’ll be there to help, often.”

Early polling on the GOP primary suggested Rosendale would beat Sheehy overwhelmingly. However, two surveys released in November found the former Navy SEAL winning, with one poll being commissioned by a pro-Sheehy super PAC.

Rosendale has until March 11 to file his candidacy for the Senate, and the Republican primary will take place on June 4.

Rosendale has been telling colleagues that he plans on launching a Senate campaign just before the filing deadline, the Washington Examiner reported on Thursday, though his team insists he has yet to make a decision.

“Rep. Rosendale has not made a decision yet,” Aashka Varma, spokesperson for Rosendale, told the DCNF in a statement. “He is focused on serving the people of Montana and spent the week fighting to fund government in a transparent and responsible manner.”

The Cook Political Report recently switched Tester’s seat from the “Lean D” category to “Toss Up” alongside other contentious races in Ohio and Arizona. The senator has been serving in the upper chamber since 2007.

The few public polls for the general election against Tester indicate he is vulnerable against both Republicans, with some suggesting he’d lose by several points to Rosendale and Sheehy, according to FiveThirtyEight’s survey compilation. The most recent survey, conducted by Emerson College, found the Democrat winning against Sheehy by 4 points.

Sheehy’s campaign did not immediately responded to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

AUTHOR

MARY LOU MASTERS

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: Matt Rosendale Announces $1.7 Million In Campaign Cash As He Weighs Senate Bid

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


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Young Montana Entrepreneur Is Being Legally Barred from Hauling Trash Because Established Players Don’t Want the Competition

If it sounds crazy that established players get a say on who is allowed to compete with them, well, it should.


When Parker Noland launched his trash-hauling business at age 20 in the summer of 2021, he was excited about the opportunities that lay before him. After taking out a loan from a local bank, the Montana native bought a truck and some dumpsters and got to work promoting his services. The business plan was simple: he would deliver dumpsters to construction sites looking to get rid of debris and then transport the dumpsters to the county dump once they were full.

Things quickly got complicated for Noland, however. Though he had registered his business, gotten the proper insurance, and complied with all public health and safety standards, he was still missing one thing, a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity. As a result, right when he was about to get his business off the ground he was given a cease and desist order by the Montana Public Service Commission, the agency responsible for administering the Certificate law.

Noland applied for the Certificate shortly thereafter on September 8, 2021, but his troubles were just getting started. Two national garbage companies—his would-be competitors—protested his application, which they are allowed to do under the law. The companies issued various demands, such as data requests, and Noland’s legal expenses to fight the protests were soon thousands of dollars and counting.

On November 9, 2021, Noland made the difficult decision to withdraw his Certificate application, seeing as he could not afford the mounting legal expenses involved with fighting the protests. To this day, Noland remains ready and willing to run his trash-hauling business, but he is legally barred from doing so until he gets the Certificate.

On November 15, 2022, Noland teamed up with the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) to file an official complaint with Montana’s eleventh judicial district court, seeking a permanent injunction against further enforcement of the law on the ground that it violates his Constitutional rights.

If it sounds crazy that established players in an industry are empowered by the government to bury would-be competitors in unnecessary legal fees, well, it should. As PLF argues, these laws practically amount to a “competitor’s veto.”

“Montana’s Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity law allows established garbage companies to keep potential competitors like Noland out of the market,” PLF writes in their complaint. “Noland applied for a Certificate, but was forced to withdraw his application after some of the largest garbage companies in the nation protested his application, which imposed massive delays and created enormous financial costs. The Certificate provisions challenged in this case prevent Noland and other would-be entrepreneurs from working—not because they are unfit to operate—but to protect incumbent garbage companies from having to compete fairly.”

“Incumbents can protest for the bare reason that they do not want to face new competition,” PLF continues. “The Montana Public Service Commission is further empowered to reject an applicant because it believes there is no ‘need’ for a new company, and therefore that a new business would take away from the incumbent’s profits. Together these provisions create a Competitor’s Veto over those who wish to exercise their right to earn a living as a Class D hauler. This blatant economic protectionism is prohibited by the Montana and U.S. Constitutions.”

In sum, “the Competitor’s Veto allows existing garbage companies to force an applicant to undergo the time and expense of an administrative hearing that has nothing to do with the applicant’s public safety record, or any other matter related to public health or safety, but instead simply because existing garbage companies seek to restrict market competition.”

Noland is hardly the only entrepreneur running into this problem. As PLF notes, there were eight applications for a Class D (trash hauling) Certificate in Montana between January 1, 2018 and September 8, 2021. All eight faced protests. As a result of the protests, four of the applications were withdrawn, one was denied, and two were granted the Certificate only after agreeing to reduce the scope of their business.

The story of the one successful applicant who didn’t have to reduce their scope is revealing.

“The only applicant who succeeded in securing a Certificate over a protest, and without reducing the scope of its business, was L&L Site Services, Inc., on December 15, 2020,” PLF notes. “After a lengthy legal fight before the Commission, which involved extensive discovery, including 13 supplemental responses to Allied Waste Services’ data requests, a 5-day evidentiary hearing requiring legal representation, and contentious oral argument, L&L’s application was granted on April 29, 2022, over two dissenting votes from Defendants Brad Johnson and Randy Pinocci.”

The garbage company which protested their application has since filed a Motion for Reconsideration, which remains pending.

“Over the past 3 years,” PLF concludes, “the strongest predictor for getting permission to enter the trade of dumpster servicing was agreeing to reduce one’s operating authority to not compete with incumbents. And even though one applicant was able to afford the time and expense of the legal battle required by an incumbent’s protest, the challenged provisions still allowed the incumbent to inflict significant costs and delay on its potential competitor for purely anti-competitive reasons.”

Laws requiring a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) cover a variety of industries in different states—from trash collection to telecommunications to natural gas—but they all have similar impacts. They are closely related to Certificate of Need laws (CON laws) which create similar barriers in the healthcare industry (hospitals, nursing homes, ambulances, etc.) and in other industries such as transportation (specifically moving companies).

The justification for these kinds of laws is twofold. For one, proponents argue that allowing businesses to compete without demonstrating a “need” will lead to duplicative services, that is, an overabundance of supply in a given area. The problem, they contend, is that this will lead to higher prices because companies will charge more for the capacity they do use to compensate for the unused capacity. If a company builds a hospital, for example, but realizes it can’t fill half its beds because the market is already saturated with hospitals, it will ostensibly hike prices for the beds it does fill to compensate for its loss.

The other argument is that by restricting entry into “saturated” markets, politicians can use CPCN and CON laws to encourage entrepreneurs to set up shop in areas that tend to have less access to these services, such as rural areas.

These arguments may sound plausible at first glance, but upon closer inspection they are rather spurious. For one, how does a bureaucrat determine when a market is too saturated? There are no objective criteria here. What’s more, the very fact that an entrepreneur is planning to enter a market is evidence that, at least from their perspective, there are needs that are currently not being met by established players.

Another major problem with this analysis is the assumption that businesses can unilaterally raise prices in order to cover their costs. This is not how prices work. Prices are set by supply and demand. If anything, a greater supply in a region will lead to lower prices.

The idea that these laws are needed to push entrepreneurs to “lower access” regions is also dubious. An entrepreneur, almost by definition, is seeking to meet needs that haven’t already been satisfied. Thus, they naturally gravitate to precisely these “low access” regions. If they successfully set up shop in a supposedly “saturated” market, it is evidence that the market wasn’t, in fact, saturated. If their business in that region fails, on the other hand, the market will quickly usher them elsewhere all on its own.

Noland’s story is a case in point on this. As PLF notes, construction companies specifically sought out Noland because the large incumbent companies weren’t picking up bins in a timely manner. In other words, there was a market need that was clearly going unfulfilled. The market was not saturated, and that’s precisely why Noland was setting up shop in the first place. Further, Noland’s more compact truck “allowed him to offer services to areas where the incumbent companies did not,” something he was no doubt planning to take advantage of.

There’s a curious irony here. Though the Certificate law was intended to increase services in underserved areas, its practical impact is to restrict services in evidently underserved areas.

There’s an irony on the price front too. Though the law was intended to keep prices down, by restricting entry it is actually creating opportunities for incumbents to keep prices up!

Thus, on both issues, these laws are not only unnecessary, but counterproductive. They are hurting the very consumers they were supposed to protect, not to mention the would-be competitors like Noland who are effectively prohibited from entering the market.

The economist Murray Rothbard summarizes the effect of these policies well in his book Power & Market.

Certificates of convenience and necessity are required of firms in industries—such as railroads, airlines, etc.—regulated by governmental commissions. These act as licenses but are generally far more difficult to obtain. This system excludes would-be entrants from a field, granting a monopolistic privilege to the firms remaining; furthermore, it subjects them to the detailed orders of the commission. Since these orders countermand those of the free market, they invariably result in imposed inefficiency and injury to the consumers.”

While the Certificate law in Noland’s story is certainly troubling, the deeper problem this story highlights is the belief that government restrictions of the market can help consumers. The reality is exactly the opposite. The best way for the government to help consumers is to get out of the way, and in particular, to stop enforcing regulations that protect established players from new entrants. Let entrepreneurs compete. Let consumers have choices.

America was built by the Parker Nolands of the world, young entrepreneurs full of dreams and ambitions.

It would be a shame if we strangled that spirit with red tape.

This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.

AUTHOR

Patrick Carroll

Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.

RELATED ARTICLE: Cuba’s Bustling Black Markets Hold an Important Economic Lesson

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

12 More States Sue Biden Administration Over Vaccine Mandate

Twelve states announced Monday they are suing the Biden Administration to block the vaccine mandate for health care workers, arguing the mandate is unconstitutional and violates several federal laws.

Attorney generals from Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia announced the suit Monday, saying “the Biden Administration is playing statutory shell games with the courts, straining to justify an unjustifiable and unprecedented attempt to federalize public health policy and diminish the sovereign States’ constitutional powers.”

“No statute authorizes the federal Executive to mandate vaccines to increase societal immunity,” the suit reads, noting President Joe Biden has touted the vaccine as a way to increase immunity. “The Administration’s solution? Use statutory schemes never before interpreted to allow federal vaccine mandates to shoehorn the President’s goals into the fabric of American society.”

The suit argues against the mandate requiring Medicare and Medicaid health care workers to be vaccinated is unconstitutional and harms patient care as employees are forced to either take the shot or lose their job.

“The Vaccine Mandate causes grave danger to vulnerable persons whom Medicare and Medicaid were designed to protect – the poor, sick, and elderly – by forcing the termination of millions of ‘healthcare heroes’,” the suit reads.

The states’ are asking for a preliminary injunction to halt the enforcement of the mandate.

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen called the mandate as “unconstitutional power grab.”

“The federal mandates are not about health – they are about forced compliance. Healthcare workers should be allowed to make their own decisions about their health – not President Biden. If his unprecedented overreach is not stopped, healthcare workers will lose their jobs threatening access to medical care that Montanans need.”

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said “this is about so much more than vaccines. It’s about planting a flag to say that ‘enough is enough.’ The federal government’s power is not boundless, but if we are vigilant to fight here and now, there will be no going back.”

Health care employees who work at facilities that accept federal funding from Medicare or Medicaid must be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4 and do not have the option to submit to regular testing rather than get vaccinated.

The court then later reaffirmed their decision, ruling the mandate likely “violates the constitutional structure that safeguards our collective liberty” and that the mandate was “staggeringly overbroad.”

COLUMN BY

BRIANNA LYMAN

Reporter. Follow Brianna on Twitter

RELATED TWEET:

RELATED ARTICLES:

6th Circuit Court To Hear Challenge To Biden Vaccine Mandate

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Montana is an example of anti-refugee sentiment spilling forth in wake of Trump victory

This is an Associated Press story that ran on Christmas day so not sure how many of you saw it.

sk_rossi

S.K. Rossi

For background, Montana had a small refugee program many years ago, but up until this year it was alone with Wyoming in not having one at all.  That changed in 2016 as Missoula ‘welcomed’ its first African and Middle Eastern refugees. I traveled to the state this summer and can attest to the sentiment outlined in this story.

For new readers you might like to see our Montana archive, here.

S.K. Rossi, advocacy and policy director for the ACLU of Montana: “It’s pretty widely known that this is going to be a hard year…”

From AP at The Seattle Times:

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The push to restrict refugee resettlements and immigration in the U.S. that figured so prominently in Donald Trump’s election is now headed to states that are preparing to convene their legislative sessions early next year, immigration advocates said.

In Montana, which took in just nine refugee families from January to early December, about a dozen bill requests related to refugees, immigration and terrorism have been filed ahead of next month’s session. The measures include requiring resettlement agencies to carry insurance that would defray the cost of prosecuting refugees who commit violent crimes and allowing towns and cities to request a moratorium on resettlements in their communities.

Refugee rights advocates say those measures are a sign of what is to come as the anti-refugee rhetoric that featured prominently in the presidential election spills over to statehouses and local governments.

“It’s pretty widely known that this is going to be a hard year for those of us who are seeking to protect the rights of refugees and immigrants,” said S.K. Rossi, advocacy and policy director for the ACLU of Montana.

The president-elect campaigned on building a border wall with Mexico to stop illegal immigration, deporting immigrants who are in the nation illegally and halting the resettlement of refugees to strengthen the federal program that vets them.

[….]

“It absolutely does not end with the presidential election,” McKenzie [Michele McKenzie, deputy director of the Minneapolis organization The Advocates for Human Rights] said. “It’s a national strategy by a small but organized group of anti-immigration advocates and anti-refugee advocates.”

[….]

“We need to get serious,” said Nancy Ballance, a Republican state representative from Ravalli County.

Ballance said refugees are a “gigantic issue” in her southwestern Montana county, just south of the liberal college city of Missoula. “People expect to see some legislation brought,” she said.

It is pretty clear that legally state legislators can’t do much to change the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), but here we have the ACLU lobbyist making the crucial point about efforts in the Montana (yours too!) legislature.

“Filing this and making it a public conversation automatically undermines the refugee process,” Rossi said.

“They can’t legally undermine the process, but they can socially undermine the process.”

Continue reading here.

Trickle up!

You have a right to ask questions and demand that your elected officials at all levels of government be transparent, and consider your economic worries and your safety concerns when the federal government targets your communities.

Efforts like these in the Montana legislature are important to help create controversy because the ultimate goal is for the controversy to ‘trickle up’ to Congress and to the new Trump Administration. There is no doubt that the USRAP must be trashed or reformed, but that pressure must come from the states (and local governments) to Washington.  Politicians hate noise and so it is your job as grassroots activists to make political noise!

To that end, since Montana’s lone House member is likely going to the Trump Interior Department, it is critical that you, in Montana, make the selection of his replacement a referendum on the refugee program. See The Hill (scroll down to Rep. Zinke).

Endnote: I am off to jury duty, be back later!

Montana: Latest Mexican Killer of Innocent Americans an ‘Unaccompanied Alien Child’?

That is my guess!  How else would a then 16-year-old Mexican, who entered the country in 2013, be now “legal” in the US.  Only the Office of Refugee Resettlement knows for sure!

Have you seen this dreadful story?  Has Donald Trump seen it?

One of Obama’s new Americans, Jesus Yeizon Deniz Mendoza demanded money and when they said they had none, he shot Jason and Tana Shane and wounded their daughter as she tried to run away.

From the Washington Times:

The man accused of killing two Good Samaritans who tried to help him on a Montana roadside was encountered by immigration authorities earlier this year after a burglary arrest, but was unable to be deported because he had already gotten legal status, federal authorities said this week.

The horrific killing has drawn attention at a time when crimes committed by immigrants are a hot political topic, thanks in part to GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s claim that Mexican society sends bad elements to the U.S.

Jesus Yeizon Deniz Mendoza, an 18-year-old Mexican man, has been charged with the killing of Jason and Tana Shane, who saw him stopped on the side of the road Wednesday and tried to help him. When they showed up on the scene with their daughter, Mr. Deniz pointed a gun at them and demanded money, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the federal court case.

[….]

Mr. Deniz is Mexican, and the Obama administration deems him a legal permanent resident who entered the country legally on May 31, 2013 — though they didn’t say how he earned that status initially.

There is more including a discussion about deporting him when he finishes his sentence.  That is b.s. because he will likely get life in prison (does Montana have the death penalty?) and we will be paying probably millions for his legal proceedings and his incarceration for years to come.  A great benefit this young “dreamer” is to America!

I sure hope we learn more about this evil man’s “legal” status in America!

For new readers we have an entire lengthy archive on so-called ‘unaccompanied minors’ who have been invading our southern border for years.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Good Samaritan Family Gunned Down Trying to Help Stranded Driver in Montana

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Mexican accused of killing not deported despite previous burglary

Muslim Immigrant Beats 12-year old Boy For Having Blue Eyes

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of Jesus Yeizon Deniz Mendoza is courtesy of the Washington Times.