News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 1445 - 1469 of 3210
The truth is, I don’t actually have 40 friends in my immediate community. I only recently moved to town when I married Peter. So, I just went around town and invited every person I recognized and, somehow, ended up inviting forty people to my patio this past Monday evening to celebrate the release of my book. I invited all the neighbors, and a guy I met on the trail, some writers, and a librarian, and a woman I occasionally see walking her dog—sometimes with her friend, Georgina. The dog-walking woman was recently div...
Friends and neighbors, I attended the rail passenger conference on Saturday in Cut Bank. One takeaway from the meeting that everyone in Northern Montana needs to be aware of; the 2019 Legislature approved House Joint Resolution 34 – the Interim Study on Passenger Transportation. Now, that may not cause any red flags to emerge, except that it was noted at the Cut Bank meeting, as per HJ 34, there is a renewed push to revive the Hiawatha Passenger Service, Chicago, Billings, Missoula and Spokane. Here’s a bit of history: Apr...
We’ve read the reports of how joblessness is down, seen all the help wanted signs and listened to the ’70s generation talk about how “jobs were so scarce back in my day, there was 80 people applying for every job listed, and if you didn’t show up in a suit, carrying a 10-page resume, for a mechanic job you were culled at the door.” Maybe that last one is just my cross to bear, nevertheless, these days, plenty of job opportunities exist, and here are some of them: The Scott...
When Guadalajara rumbled with a 3.9 quake, I neither felt nor heard it but at the same time a weird wind seemingly blowing from all directions hit us hard. That night I lay in bed looking up at the bricks that form my roof. What if . . . I’ll never forget the quake that shook Seattle a few years back and terrified me. It sounded like a freight train headed for my head and the ground rolled. Though a child, I still remember the Yellowstone Quake. Another quake hit this m...
As long-time readers of The Postscript know, I do not delve into politics or current events. You might think this comes from a desire to find common ground with all my readers. You might think I am trying to bridge the divide in a time when there aren’t enough opportunities to examine the myriad of things we have in common. Or you might simply think I am a coward who wishes to avoid controversy. You would all be wrong. I am simply too ill-informed to say anything intelligent about current events, certainly anything that h...
Actions speak louder than words. But words create the environment and world in which we live. Our actions and words matter greatly — and the actions and words of the Montana State Legislature in the 2019 session were clear: Montana will not allow sexual abuse, especially abuse of children, to continue. We removed the statute of limitations allowing for criminal prosecution of sexual abuse against children and established a Sexual Assault Survivors’ Day. Sexual assault, including crimes such as rape and incest, is a cancer in...
While the Catholic Church gets bashed frequently for its outdated church-sanctioned laws and pressured to modernize its ways, I’m here to lend some non-church support for one of those canons which started in the Detroit-area in the 1700s: muskrats on the menu for Lent. Yes, in the 1700s the missionary priests in the Detroit area allowed Catholic parishioners to eat muskrat “on days of abstinence, including Fridays of Lent,” the Archdiocese of Detroit told The Associated Press...
After (falsely) claiming total exoneration from the release of a redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, President Trump has dug in his heels even further, telling reporters that the White House was fighting “all the subpoenas” from Democrats in the House of Representatives. Presumably included on that list are efforts by the House Judiciary Committee to subpoena former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify on his testimony in Mueller’s report. There’s also the House Oversight Committee, which hel...
My son Ben lives in Poulsbo, a lovely town across the water from Seattle, where I lived with my family for 25 years. He sent the following email to me and it is a better story than any I could write. He presents this story in a stream-of-consciousness way so I broke it into paragraphs. Otherwise, it is all Ben’s words, unedited. Have you heard of the Coffee Oasis in Bremerton? A guy started it years ago. It gives homeless and people in recovery a chance to have a job and a h...
When I was a student at West Point in the 1990s, the military component of my education focused on high-intensity conflict and Cold War-era strategies and tactics. Those were the wars of recent memory, so that’s what we trained for. After my graduation and the events of Sept. 11, however, my generation of military officers faced a new set of challenges. Rather than engaging in armored conflict focused on seizing and holding terrain, we found ourselves in a multi-dimensional, complex environment where the goal was not to destr...
Economic Development Week is a time to reflect on the many successes of public-private partnerships to grow businesses, create jobs and strengthen the economy. This year, Montana has something extra to celebrate with the bipartisan passage of House Bill 52. HB 52 reauthorizes Montana’s suite of integrated economic development programs until 2027 — tools like Certified Regional Development Corporations, Small Business Development Centers, the export trade program at the Department of Commerce, Growth Through Agriculture at...
The 2019 turned out to be a success for wildlife legislature and habitat. We look back at a session that had more than 80 bills affecting our core issues of wildlife, habitat and access, and see many wins and a handful of losses when it comes to improving public access to public lands. First off, our best conservation and hunting access program, Habitat Montana, came out of the session intact and fully funded. Habitat Montana uses hunting license dollars to protect important wildlife habitat through conservation easements...
In the waning hours of Montana’s 66thLegislative Session, good public policy squeaked through, including Medicaid expansion and an infrastructure bill. But, public works can’t fix the deferred maintenance of the outdated way these bills made it through. That takes political will. Montana’s current legislative system dates back to statehood. Yet, we face 21stCentury demands. As we stuff more into each session without evaluating how it’s working or making important updates, public transparency clouds, democracy fades and Mon...
Winning the big payout in any lottery is rare because the odds are astronomically against that happening, but that holds true for a lot of things. Because the lottery folks are in the business of making money, they take paying it out very seriously. In the U.K., people who play the British National Lottery have about a 1-in-45 million chance of winning the scratch ticket’s big payout, which is significantly better than the 1-in-292.2 million odds of winning the U.S. Powerball....
At the start of the legislative session, I delivered my fourth and final State of the State address. I shared my optimism that in Montana we can still be a shining example of how our political system is supposed to work and that as elected leaders we should base our decisions not only on today’s needs, but with an eye toward improving the Montana our kids and grandkids — future legislators and governors — will inherit. That optimism was proven out in the 66th Montana Legislative Session. Nearly every proposal I asked the l...
A half-century ago the power in Montana politics was the Montana Power Company. Created to provide electricity for the operations of the Anaconda Copper Company, “the terrible twins” dominated Montana both economically and politically for most of the last century. Through their organizations they recruited legislative candidates from both parties, kept track of legislative votes and selectively informed Montanans by the newspapers they controlled. Much of the old order changed with the adoption of Montana’s 1972 Const...
I firmly believe Montana farmers and ranchers care deeply about developing and growing consumer confidence and trust in the products we painstakingly raise. It’s a key goal in helping a growing urban demographic understand why we’re so passionate about our agricultural and rural lifestyles and to help them understand what goes into producing the food they eat. Country of Origin Labeling — COOL — rules were one way Congress and the USDA tried to make it easier for consumers to decipher where their beef and pork product...
The Montana Cattlemen’s Association is very disappointed that the Montana Legislature refused to enact a Montana Country of Origin Labeling law (Mt-COOL). Although the bill did receive limited bipartisan support, it was primarily the majority party that refused to vote for this common sense proposition overwhelmingly supported by Montana’s consumers and livestock producers. The proposed law was based on the Mt-COOL law which was enacted by the 2005 Legislature. This 2005 law had a sunset clause for when a national COOL was...
I know that I said (quite plainly), “I am not going to buy any more pots for my plants.” I spoke these words quite sincerely, often, back when I had accumulated a total 100 (plus a small number) pots. I counted several times, trying to be, wanting to be, wrong. Plants, flowers, bushes, have a done-by date, just as we do. Some I’ve pulled out by their dead roots and reused their containers. But I’ve also made changes in my garden, some of which require more containers. For exa...
Montana has for decades been at the forefront of wildlife conservation among states in the West. We have the best hunting and angling in the country, and Montana has long set the standard in hunting ethics. As Montanans we value fair chase as an essential part of our sporting heritage, and that’s why we banned game farms nearly two decades ago. We also have many laws and regulations on the books to ensure that fair chase hunting persists. Put simply, fair chase means the animal has a reasonable chance to get away. But one a...
The 66th legislative session has come to an end. As speaker of the House, it was my goal to uphold the integrity of the House. As a leader in my caucus it was my goal to foster unity not conformity. We can be united behind the primary ideals of our party without losing individuality. It has been an honor to be selected by my peers to fill this roll. In looking at our accomplishments this session, several positive actions stand out. First, it was a goal of ours to keep taxes low and we were successful in stopping over a...
This past Thursday was the last day of Montana’s 66th legislative session. In the Senate, after passing some key bills to fund the state for the next two years, a motion was made to do something about tie votes in interim committees. As everyone was trying to figure out how that all would work, a substitute motion was made to “sine die,” and with that came a quick end to the session. Now, we wait to see what bills the governor is willing to sign. I am happy to say there is money coming to this area for drinking water proje...
I have been struggling with how to broach an indelicate personal subject with the polite words needed in a public platform such as this, but I don’t know if there is a delicate way to say that my cat Tony has fallen deeply, madly and inappropriately in love with me. It’s a bit startling. For both of us, I think. I get it, though, right? This is the first time he’s felt this safe and content with a human. He doesn’t know what to make of this happy feeling. He’s always retained his early lessons for feral cat survival:...
Several weeks or months ago, all the women in the Rancho jumped onto the latest diet-craze roller coaster. One at a time. I’m not sure how or why. Each is beautiful in her own way. I say “all” the women. I mean all but myself. I wasn’t invited. Not that I would have bought the ticket. I once rode that carnival ride and it cost me dearly. I have not dieted since. When I was in high school, several girls attempted the diet of that time. When I make up my mind to do somethi...
When women and girls go missing in our state, it’s not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem — it’s a Montana problem. And it’s an urgent one. Not much research exists on the epidemic of Indigenous women and girls going missing or being murdered. But we do know that in Montana, where human trafficking is on the rise and there are serious flaws in our missing persons reporting system, hundreds of people have gone missing and their families are still left wondering what happened to them. That’s why this legislati...
