News you can use
News you can use
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Every two or three days I make a list of chores and things to do. My list keeps me focused, nags at me. My list includes jobs which, if I didn't stick on them, might fall out of sight. These are suggestions, not orders. I pride myself on my flexibility, one of my better qualities. Nothing is cast in concrete. My inner compass points me to go with the flow, as we used to say. CASondra AshtonPTION On a diamonds-in-the-sky Monday morning I checked my list. I decided to vacuum, th...
Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to share breakfast with two groups of amazing young leaders: Montana 4-H, and the Young Stockgrowers of Montana. I'm proud to say the Young Stockgrowers had a formidable north-central Montana delegation. I appreciated the chance to listen to their fresh perspectives, and plans for their futures. Talking to them was a great reminder of what I heard when I knocked on doors and talked to community members last summer. The legislative session is about getting things done for Montanans,...
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...
The general method at this point is to sit at the computer staring at the screen or the keyboard or the wall or the solitaire game and think about what's been going on in my life. This week, though, I've been experiencing troubles Pam Burke Dog, cat, horses: no catastrophes. Husband: not in trouble. Job: uninteresting (which I mean in the most respectful way possible, boss. You know me). Weather: boring. Me: totally boring, relatively uninjured and completely got nothin'. I...
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 collision of two cherished principles — the constitutional right to privacy and the public's right to know — is often described as a "delicate balance" where, under any given set of circumstances, one trumps the other. These are challenging decisions, with commissioners and judges often called upon to weigh competing arguments and make the difficult call. Such was the case recently, when the Public Service Commission took up the question of whether a previously passed PSC rule requiring all regulated utilities — large...
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...
The Indian Health Service, underbudgeted and understaffed, operates almost 500 health care centers across the country. Most of them are in areas of significant public health challenges, mainly on Indian reservations, where poverty, disease and substance abuse are rampant. Norman Bernstein According to the agency's director, the Indian Health Service's Catastrophic Health Emergency Fund, which is used for trauma care and major surgeries, as well as other catastrophic events, will run out of money before the end of the year,...
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...
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...
The proponents of Medicaid expansion are unabashedly brandishing their rhetoric-based talking points claiming the measure would do everything from creating thousands of jobs to bringing revenue to our state. Among these are claims that passing the expansion would save hospitals money, make Montana a healthier state, and incentivize people to be more proactive about their health — all things that I support. The problem is that Medicaid expansion does not produce these results. By the numbers "Medicaid expansion would create t...
The 63rd Montana Legislature adjourned without taking action on one of the most important pieces of public policy before them — the acceptance of federal funds to expand health care to uninsured Montanans. As a result, up to 70,000 Montanans were denied coverage that would have saved lives, lowered health care costs for all of us, and protected providers struggling with uncompensated care. It's not too late to do the right thing. Legislators left the Capitol with several days remaining in the session. They owe it to M...
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...
Whereas, the historical nature of man's existence on this earth has been one of servitude to a monarch, despot or benevolent government; and Whereas, collectivist thinking dictates that only by following an amalgamation of government agencies and programs can a vibrant future be attained via public private partnerships: and Rick Dow Whereas, the philosophy of Karl Marx which has given citizens of the United Soviet Socialists Republic, Cuba and North Korea (to name only a few) the individual freedoms that we as Americans have...
