Daines disgraces Montana

Twice in one day, Senator Steve Daines has disgraced Montana.

“School choice” does not help the budget of public schools in our cities and towns, and it offers nothing whatsoever for education in our rural areas, where there will never be charter schools to offer “choice.” But Daines chose to back out-of-state campaign contributions over the interests of Montanans when he voted for Betsy DeVos.

Later the same day, he played toady to authoritarian party powers, helping to silence open, honest debate, with the party-line vote to silence Senator Elizabeth Warren. Her “out of bounds” testimony? Reading letters written by Senator Ted Kennedy and by Coretta Scott King, which had been considered as earlier Senate committee testimony.

If Steve Daines and the party in power are so genuine in their adherence to Senate rules, why didn’t those same rules compel them to allow Supreme Court nomination hearings last year, as provided for by the Constitution?

This is a sad day for Montana’s representation in our nation’s capital. Steve Daines has disgraced our state by putting wealthy campaign donors ahead of Montana’s school children, and by taking part in ham-fisted authoritarian practices more at home in the Kremlin or the 1930s Reichstag than in a twenty-first-century democracy.

Tod Trimble

Stevensville