News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 1659 - 1683 of 3212
This fall, we have the opportunity to ensure that nearly 100,000 Montanans including our seniors, veterans and their families continue to have health care. If we do not pass the Healthy Montana Initiative or I-185 hardworking Montanans could be harmed. Kudos to all the health care associations that were proactive in designing I-185, with funding provided through an increase in the tobacco tax. It prevents cuts to Medicaid including services to veterans, children, seniors and people with disabilities. I-185 would also: • H...
It’s a mystery. I hear Jack Webb’s voice (Sgt. Joe Friday) in my ear. “Just the facts, Ma’am. Just the facts.” July 25, a sweltering sunny afternoon, my granddaughter Antoinette, rode her bike down Kendrick, a side street in Glendive, Montana. At 3:30 her Mother sat in her office, recording client notes into a file, waiting for her 4 o’clock appointment, when her phone rang. “Mom, come get me. I wrecked my bike. I don’t know where I am.” She was on a street she rode every da...
As I mentioned in my last update, we scheduled a meeting at the Tiber Marina to address the possible relocation of the boat decontamination station and some campsites. I was very pleased with the turnout. The meeting was attended by Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Bureau of Reclamation, county representatives, members of the general public, Marina concessionaires and myself. Getting all parties together and having a conversation on how to move forward is a great start. As we discussed the issues, it was evident that the station...
While news sources are waging a battle of perspectives in articles about humans — an easy example being: Is Trump crazy like bat guano or crazy like a fox — recent articles about animals have another side, as well. A Association Press article about a Belleville, Illinois, man who was trying to rescue his parrot but had to be pulled out of the quicksand-like mud himself, had these informative sentences: “Firefighters had to rescue a southwestern Illinois man from deep mud after...
When passing by a mirror this morning, I thought, “Lord, oh dear, I’m composting.” Well, aren’t we all but that’s no consolation. Which thought led me to a memory that shook me to my bones. My Aunt Mary, at 90, who had composted a lot by that time, said to me, “I’ve outlived all my friends. There is nobody with whom I can talk about how it used to be. “And many can’t hear me when I talk about how it is now,” she continued. Which memory led me to several threads, lines convergi...
Editor, I want to personally thank VMWare, Team4Tech and CoSN for selecting Havre as a Good Gigs Trek destination. As a precursor to the arrival of the Good Gigs Trek team, in early August, Havre Public Schools received a technology hardware package from VMware/Dell valued at $95,432.73 donated to the Havre Public Schools Education Foundation. In no way do I want to minimize this gift as the impact it will have from both a fiscal and technology perspective is beyond appreciated. This number does not come close to the final fi...
Lost amidst the flurry of tariff-related disputes between the United States and Canada is an under-addressed and far weightier issue than steel. It is a lethal, but largely preventable threat: the trade and illegal importation of counterfeit drugs, most notably those containing fentanyl. Trade between the U.S. and Canada exceeds $650 billion each year, but beyond this legal trade looms the danger of illicitly traded goods. Criminals take advantage of our soft border, which strong trade has created. Some illicit goods like...
Paris is known as a city of beauty and history. It is the icon of sophistication. It is now sullying its reputation, literally, with its new urinals. Ah, Paris, you are going in the toilet, or as the city officials prefer “le urinoir.” “Paris residents peeved at very public eco-friendly urinals” reads the Aug. 13 headline to a Reuters article by Jack Hunter. Picture this: Beneath the headline is a photo of a stylish twenty-something man facing, and standing quite close t...
I consider myself a pretty practical person. Yet I find myself incredibly sad, from time to time, mourning the death of Cat Ballou. I had an opportunity several weeks ago to adopt a new kitten from Ballou’s mother’s latest litter. “No. I leave in two months to see my family. It wouldn’t be right for me to take a new kitten and then abandon her for several weeks.” See, practical. Yesterday morning Nancie phoned. “Can you come over to visit?” My cousin was leaving the next day, back to Washington. We had already made plans fo...
Scientists have finally solved the great mystery of the Bermuda Triangle that has haunted mankind for a century, but no one can figure out why Christmas season is now emerging like a mirage through the shimmer of a summer heatwave. Several news media outlets are reporting about a BBC-aired documentary in which Dr. Simon Boxall, an ocean and earth scientist at the University of Southampton, says that the hundred years of hype about the Bermuda Triangle being an unnatural...
Rule No. 1: Never write when sick. Rule No. 2: Do whadevah ya gotta do. It’s a virus, I’m sure. Caught it from a hug from Josue, who thought he’d eaten bad mangoes. Four days ago. Mangoes good. Virus bad. Hugs good. I’m not going to live under a blister-pak. I twist myself into knots in order to avoid paying obeisance to the toilet god, Ralph. Fortunately, neither my stomach nor my mind felt hunger that afternoon. I felt listless. I should have seen the clues. Next day, yo...
Sen. Jon Tester has a difficult decision ahead of him. Should he vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and risk alienating his fundraising base, or should he vote no on Judge Kavanaugh and risk alienating many Montanans? As every good inquiry should begin, let’s take an objective look at Judge Kavanaugh’s credentials. The Judge graduated from Yale College cum laude (with distinction) in 1987 and Yale Law School in 1990. His work history is as follows: law clerk for the Third Circuit, law clerk for the Nin...
Skip political races and cultural wars, Egypt and Mexico have officially gone toe to toe for the title of most outrageous jackassery literally involving a jackass of the four-legged variety, and Egypt has kicked Mexico’s jackass in the brawl. My one trip into Mexico, roughly one hundred years ago, was a quick jaunt across the border to Tijuana, which, it might be argued, isn’t real Mexico, but the touristy side-show is technically within the borders of the country, so technica...
Promises are important, at least that’s what we tell our kids. In Montana and around the country, there are groups advocating that we break the promises made to our American Indian friends and neighbors. These groups, which form the anti-Indian movement, represent a systematic effort to deny legally-established rights by terminating American Indian sovereignty and culture. They feed on the public’s lack of knowledge regarding treaty rights and the negative stereotypes directed at American Indians. They strive to create fear a...
Now that the dog days of summer are upon us, campaign season is kicking into high gear. While it seems like November is a long way off, it will be here in the blink of an eye. Montana’s federal races will garner an understandable and significant amount of attention. However, as has always been the case, the decisions made at the state level through the Montana Legislature are at least as important, and perhaps more so, than those being made in Washington, D.C. It’s why I want to serve as your next state senator. The imp...
I live at #3 Nopales on a small piece of the Rancho Esperanza set aside for a dozen or so retirement homes. That’s the sum total of any pretense to an Americano community in this still traditional small village of Etzatlan. It’s not an official government-recognized address. No mail delivery. Jane emailed me that a woman she knows, a woman without benefit of email (how quickly we believe if we do it, everybody does it.) would like to correspond with me. This is not my fir...
If you pop open a cold Corona this summer, there’s a good chance you’re drinking one of Montana’s most important commodities. Though Corona is brewed in Mexico, much of it is made from barley imported from the Big Sky State. But today this important market is at risk because of the irresponsible trade war threatening Montana agriculture. Because of tariffs and all the uncertainty in American trade, Mexican breweries are now turning elsewhere for their barley. For decades, Montana farmers and ranchers worked tirelessly to ga...
Having not forgotten the lessons I learned as your Public Service Commissioner for eight years, I always read with interest the reports on what the two current candidates for PSC District #1 are saying to the voters in their campaign. I was startled and appalled at the complete disregard for the facts demonstrated by one of those two candidates when he promised a heavenly nirvana of low cost electricity and high government revenues by building coal-fired plants on the Hi-Line...
A man walked into a Planet Fitness in Plaistow, New Hampshire, last weekend, stripped to his nothings at the front door, paced a few laps in the exercise area naked, checked himself out in the mirror naked, then staked a claim on a yoga mat where officers found him still buck naked in a "yoga-type position," Plaistow police Capt. Brett Morgan told several news outlets. Morgan also said that the guy's only comment to officers who came to arrest him was to say that he thought...
I woke from my dream with that southern hill-country woman’s voice in my ear. The voice, the memory, from past years, was triggered in that non-linear way of memories, by a phone conversation with my daughter the previous day. My oldest granddaughter is in a precarious place in her life. A baby with babies. Jessica is young, alone with two babies, lonely, no job, no direction and thinking biologically instead of using her logical brain. I remember those feelings; I was young once. Harper’s father sent her train tickets for a...
This past week I had the opportunity to spend time with weed control folks from all four of the counties I represent. The Marias River runs though Liberty County to Hill County then on to Chouteau County before entering the Missouri just below Loma. Therefore, weeds migrate down stream, this is the focus of the annual Week Float. Noxious weeds were an issue I dealt with when I was with Liberty County as commissioner, then as your senator I voted for weed control bills. Many of the weed team members from the four counties are...
On the surface, catfish, a German crisis, baby ducks, the American Old West, modern American Southeast and a sport that sounds like pasta making, but isn’t, don’t seem to have much in common, but I think we can get there from here. News reports started coming out in the fall of 2012 that the wels catfish, a type of catfish common across Europe, were taking over rivers in Germany, including the famous Rhine. This is pretty important stuff, especially since 1) the bio...
That morning, while eating a plata de fruta on the patio, ten feet from the incoming tide, a family of Tenates, Grackles to you and me, swooped onto my table. They look like ill-groomed clowns, like they got up on the wrong side of bed and forgot to comb their hair. While I believe sharing food is good and honorable, these birds are of the crow family, and like their northern relations, are unrepentant scavengers. I invited them to leave. They grinned, all six of them, and...
A funny thing happened to Montana voters on their way to the ballot box a few years back. Once an obscure issue, public access to public land — land ordinary citizens actually own — began to become an important matter. This November, it will be more important than ever before. Montanans have always enjoyed a rich heritage of outdoor recreation on lands owned by the public and managed by state and federal agencies. As the privilege of recreating on private lands began to fall victim to outfitter leasing and out of state “tr...
Tobacco addiction has taken too many lives in Montana. The Healthy Montana initiative, I-185, will raise the tax on tobacco products, keeping kids from starting a deadly addiction and helping adults who smoke quit. As organizations focused on health, the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Lung Association and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids are united in our support for I-185 because we know that raising the tobacco tax will help reduce smoking — the No. 1 cause of preventab...
