News you can use
News you can use
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Bernstein The Bureau of Indian Affairs was created in 1824 by the War Department of the U.S. government. Its main function was to control Native American opposition to white American expansion into Indian lands. The bureau became a part of the Interior Department in 1849, and the concept of containing the Indians within a system of reservations became official government policy. Today, the bureau costs U.S. taxpayers about $3 billion dollars a year. Its primary purpose seems to be to attempt to legitimize the 200-year-old...
Lindeen Here's to working together. Here's to the slow, arduous pursuit of compromise. Here's to the overlooked, under-appreciated, unglamorous middle ground. These days, we hear so much from the fringes that it's easy to forget that progress is possible. When Montana's Legislature met in 2011, one fringe ran the show, refusing to budge and leaving the people of Montana in a lurch. Moderates, compromise, and middle ground were scarce around the halls of the Capitol. Instead, we got a heaping helping of grandstanding and...
Jergeson This regular session of the Legislature concluded with the adjournment of the Montana Senate at about 3p.m. Wednesday, during the 87th day, three days early. The moderate center from both parties continued to hold throughout the final days and hours of the session despite the efforts of the radicals to crash the proceedings. To the extent I had a small part in forging that essential center among legislators, I consider the session to have been a success. We succeeded in balancing the budget, leaving a reasonable...
Baucus Serving you is the greatest privilege of my life. Over the past 40 years, I've had one goal: make life better for the people of this state. You don't become the longest serving senator in Montana without a lot of help from a lot of people. I am grateful for the opportunity you have given me. When I asked my hero Mike Mansfield whether I should run for U.S. Senate, he told me it would take a lot of hard work, a lot of shoe leather and a bit of luck. In the next year and a half, instead of campaigning, I want to spend...
One of the big financial problems facing the currently meeting Montana Legislature in Helena and the newly elected Gov. Steve Bullock is the large shortage of funds in the Montana Public Retirement account. While covering current expenses with the help of previous legislation, the retirement account is still running short of the funs that it ultimately requires. Bill Thackeray It is not the payment of current retirement accounts in trouble. Rather it is the actuarial or investment value of assets to raise interest for the...
Joe Balyeat recently wrote a Community Forum column about why the Legislature should refuse the expansion of Medicaid in Montana. As a staunch Republican and a board member of a hospital in a small town, I disagree. Mr. Balyeat's synopsis of the health care program seems to suggest that we should do away with the systems that are in place. Regardless of what Mr. Balyeat believes and regardless of whether he and I agree on policies, Mr. Obama is the president and his health care plan is in place for at least four more years....
The over-reaction to the announcement that the Public Service Commission was considering rescinding administrative rule 38.2.5031, which concerns disclosure of executive pay, is both misdirected and ill-informed. Since the Commission's January motion, a steady flow of fear-inciting rhetoric has been showing up in newspapers and through the special-interest network. I would respectfully request that everyone who decides to comment on the value of the rule please do yourself and the public a huge favor and read both the law as...
In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a good person — neither am I a particularly bad person. I'm just OK-ish. I'll admit to that. Pam Burke If you need examples, then, for example, I harbor no ill-will nor ill-intent toward small children or puppies. But I have to admit that neither do I spend my free time knitting plastic, electrical-outlet covers for under-experienced children or puppies whose only desire is to create an industrial-type accident by inserting a t...
Our Hill County Courthouse is a beautiful historic building worthy of preservation and deserves to be an active part of Hill County and Havre's future. I commend the Hill County Commissioners on their quest to preserve and maintain our courthouse and applaud their efforts seeking CTEP funding to keep our courthouse safe and beautiful. This is not to impugn the efforts of the Softball Association. Both projects are worthy of funding and assets to the community. Our Hill County Courthouse is the most beautiful piece of architec...
Editor: Many of you are aware of this project, but for those of you who are not: I am reclaiming a campground, now named Hidden Hollows in Beaver Creek Park, about 1 mile south of Lions Campground on the west side of the road. This campground has the potential for seven camp sites that I plan to designate with fire pits, picnic tables and shelters with tin roofs and concrete pads. I will also be fixing the existing outhouse unless funding allows for a new one. My original estimated costs for this project were $8,000, plus or...
Havre Pride Day cleanup on Saturday was a great success. The Havre Pride Committee of the Havre Area Chamber of Commerce led the way for the spring clean-up campaign in partnership with Recycle Hi-Line and recycling partners Walmart and Pacific Steel & Recycling. The turnout to help clean up Havre and recycle was awesome. Thank you to each and every one of you that gave time to pick up many areas around town. I want to give a shout out to the schools, which did their cleanup Friday afternoon even though Mother Nature decided...
This session, we are being treated to a number of bills proposing to simplify the Montana income tax system. Nearly everyone agrees with the basic premise of simplification. However, when an actual bill is proposed, the devil is in the details. One bill we have been grappling with in the Senate Taxation Committee on the topic, SB 282, proposes to replace the current Montana list of credits, deductions, and additions on the Montana form and replace it with the federal schedules instead. While the federal income tax regime is f...
National Nursing Home Week is celebrated across the country in the month of May to honor nursing home residents and the caring, committed staff who assist them in their daily lives. As the administrator at Northern Montana Care Center, this week means special dinners, a talent show, awards and plenty of smiling faces at the "office." This special week is also a perfect time to focus on our mission at the care center and how that mission is truly changing lives. There has been a recent systematic, organizational change in...
Friends don't let friends do sit-ups. They don't let them do crunches, either, or leg raises or this thing called a plank which is like a push-up that you just hold for, like, well, a plank. And they certainly don't have them do all these things together in a month. Friends do NOT let friends do the 30-day Ab Challenge to gain that six-pack of defined abdominal muscles. It's ridiculous. No one in their right mind sets out to do15 sit ups, 5 crunches, 5 leg raises and 10 second...
Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher's partner in foreign affairs, and her mirror image in domestic affairs, was president of the United States from 1981 to 1989, during which time the U.S. national debt tripled, from $997 billion to $2.85 trillion. His administration reduced taxes on the wealthiest Americans by 60 percent, ordered vast increases in military spending, attacked labor unions across the board, caused a reduction in hourly wages, a rise in unemployment as unskilled jobs disappeared, and forced more and more wives...
Havre City Councilman Rick Dow will attend his last council meeting tonight. Dow is moving to Minnesota where his wife, a doctor, has received a good position with the highly respected Mayo Clinic. Dow's 16 months in office have been marked by controversy, just the way he wanted it. He has been an outspoken supporter of conservative causes. He's asked questions that aren't usually asked and made comments that are not usually made — at least not at City Council meetings. If Dow were to compile a list of the 1,000 things h...
Looking east from Montana toward Washington, D.C., the view can be grim at times. Congress and the president are too often bogged down in rancorous bickering while solutions to our nation's most pressing challenges take a back seat to politics. But when it comes to protecting public safety, the 2013 legislative session showed we do things better here in Montana. When I took office as your attorney general in January. I supported and introduced legislation addressing issues such as child abuse prevention, repeat DUI...
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was buried last week at a small Muslim cemetery in rural Virginia, far away from the massive chaos he created while detonating bombs that disrupted the Boston marathon, killing and dismembering many people. During the search for him, a police officer was killed and a city was kept in terror. Tsarnaev is the face of evil, and it's easy to understand why people in the Boston area were reluctant to see him buried in their area. Still, I'm glad they found a place for him to rest in peace — the kind of peace t...
The dog showed up on my doorstep, shivering and whimpering, lost and hungry, minus collar, tags or known history. Yes, I know. I know. Wisdom says, if you feed him, he will never leave. But what would you do? The leaves had fled the poplar trees in my yard. The rime of frost was thicker each morning. Day light was migrating south. The mercury plummeted. Snow flakes gathered, readying for the long-dark-night-of-the-soul Montana winter. Sondra Ashton I am a cat person. I do not...
Western Native Voice has watched House Bill 30, short-titled "An Act Revising the Close of Late Voter Registration," with growing alarm. This bill, introduced by Rep. Ted Washburn of Bozeman, purports to be a solution to supposed problems in Montana's elections. The main part of the bill will be to close and halt regular voter registration for 30 days prior to an election. However, no information is presented indicating why this is a good idea or even suggesting there is a problem that needs to be fixed. Rather, the regular...
I believe every teacher who dedicates his or her professional life to education is special and deserves respect and gratitude, and I would like to express my deep appreciation for Mrs. Kathy Sather, first-grade teacher at Highland Park Elementary Wednesday was Wonderful Wednesday in Mrs. Sather's classroom. Parents were invited to come to school for lunch and spend the afternoon in the classroom. We split the opportunity with my husband having lunch with them and me spending the afternoon in the classroom. Although, my...
One of the many old schools of thought about horses is that the initial purchase price is a small fraction of what you will end up spending on it during its lifetime. Horses are really just hairy fertilizer factories that you throw money into. Pam Burke My experience with adopting stray cats though has been just the opposite. Those experiences have gone quite well, from a pocketbook stand point. Apparently, though, there's a little bit of luck involved in the stray cat...
I spent my youth on a Milk River Valley farm in the '50s and early '60s, my life bounded by the river which held our fields like a broken cup. A mile length of private road connected us to the county roads and on to Harlem. In those days there was little need to travel further afield. In Harlem we could find the necessities, food and clothing, hardware and tractor parts. We even had a movie house. I went to Havre only for school or church functions, maybe three times in my...
Pam Burke We here at Pamville News — employees, interns, volunteers, hangers-on and laze-abouts — in no way condone, excuse or otherwise support violence in any form. That said, though, when you hear that a man in the UK was beat up by two guys dressed like Oompa Loompas — orange skin, green hair, hoop pants and all — ya just gotta laugh. It may be the law. It really could be. The UK's Daily Mail Online reports that the Norfolk police said two men dressed like the fiction...
"I never bought a man that wasn't for sale," said former U.S. Sen. William Clark. One of Montana's first senators, Clark bought his way to Washington with $10,000 bribes to state legislators. We've come a long way since then, passing the Corrupt Practices Act in 1912 and enjoying a century of slow-but-sure progress toward cleaner, fairer elections. Recent developments in election spending, however, threaten that century of work. Twice during this year's legislative session, Montana legislators rejected a bipartisan proposal...
