News you can use
News you can use
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The Bill of Rights has become controversial. Some think we need a disinformation board to save us from an excess of First Amendment’s free speech. Not that long ago, a retired Supreme Court justice opined we’d be better off without the Second Amendment, and the Fourth Amendment has been optional ever since we got the Patriot Act 20 years ago. But nobody has anything to say about the Third. The Third Amendment is brief. “No Soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any h...
The 2023 Montana wildfire season was slow to start. Average snowpack combined with rain in much of the state, spared an early fire season. Recent hot days and dry fuels, however, have now put Montana into active fire season with over 40,000 acres burned by early August. Montana’s average annual temperatures have been getting hotter and are currently 2.7 degrees F warmer than at the start of the Industrial Revolution. This warming fuels wildfires, drought, snowpack loss and extreme heat. In late July, Gov. Greg Gianforte a...
Yesterday, an email from Jerry pinged into my inbox. (See, I can talk modern too.) Jerry is a high school classmate, Harlem, Class of ’63. Back in ’05 I attended my first class reunion, or was it ’06. No matter. Surprisingly, several classmates showed up, we met in clusters, here and there, discovered we wanted more time together. Back in that other world, we had been a tight class, maybe because there were so few of us. At any rate, we determined to meet annually. And we di...
The American GI Forum, American Veterans for Equal Rights Transgender and Diverse Veterans of America Action Group and numerous other organizations from around the nation recently denounced amendments to the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024, that would deny reproductive health care and gender affirming care to veterans of the U.S. military. We stand united in our opposition to any language in the 12 bills that make up the Omnibus Appropriations package that seeks to break...
I see him painting every afternoon. Every day I take a walk and, when I am in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, my walk usually takes me through an old fabric mill that has been converted into gallery space. Most of the galleries sell the work of artists from Mexico City and beyond. But some of the galleries are spaces where artists are both working and selling their work, and the floor is spattered with paint, and easels hold paintings in various stages of completion. Usually,...
Too many vacation rentals. Banks buying houses. Committed and hardworking Department of Revenue staff. There are an awful lot of options for who and what to blame for the steep property tax appraisals that many of us received in the mail the last few weeks. But I’ll tell you about the best kept secret in Montana this summer … the Republican supermajority could have prevented this. Let’s look at how. Last week, I attended the Department of Revenue’s community meeting in Helena about our property tax appraisals. People were fr...
Montana Democrats are out in full force trying to convince Montanans that they want to reduce your taxes. This is far from the truth as their actions in the legislative session speak much louder than their words now. When they had the opportunity to support giving Montana resident taxpayers $900 million back in income and property taxes (up to nearly $4,000 per family), only two Democrat legislators in the entire Legislature voted for the rebates. The rest of the Democrats wanted to keep your money and spend it to grow...
Editor: In recent news, you have all been reading and talking about Tom Patrick being arrested and charged with multiple felonies related to the derailment on his property east of Havre. I am amazed that in our society today, if anyone hears the word gun, we get excited and that is exactly what happened. Tom Patrick and any men or women who are a U.S. citizens have a constitutional right to own a firearm, carry a firearm, and defend themselves and property with a firearm. Tom Patrick, like many of us Montana landowners will...
Ah, yes, night life. Just those two words are evocative of many experiences. The Prom. Many people have been traumatized for life by simple high school dances. The intention, learning socialization skills, is honorable. The actuality can be, uh, nightmare material for a lifetime. Dining and dancing in later life. Probably a mixed bag for most of us. Some nights quite pleasurable and others cringe-causing. Normal. Walking the floor over you. Babies are born. Night life takes...
I’m writing this on my birthday and feeling more than usually grateful. “What do you want to do?” my husband, Peter, asks, as he always does on my birthday. Peter refuses to celebrate his own birthday, but he only applies the no-birthday rule to himself. I am free to celebrate any way I want — so long as I don’t expect any kind of surprise from him. I don’t. And so I tried to think of what would make my day special, and it was hard. Because, these days, all my days are pr...
Gently down the stream. Well, I try. I try to remember the water is moving. Downstream. Now and then I am compelled to turn my boat and battle the currents upstream. The currents always batter me back into submission. Well, I had to try. Floating downstream is so much easier. Water is movement. Movement is change. Change is neither positive nor negative. Neither good nor bad. We give it those meanings, out of the experiences and perceptions, each according to how we choose to...
Las Vegas card sharks, Mississippi Riverboat gamblers, and Churchill Downs handicappers are pleased that Gov. Greg Gianforte and Montana’s Republican legislators pulled a fast one on Montana homeowners in the 2023 session. Earlier this year, they permanently raised state residential property taxes by 43 percent — $81 million a year, and $162 million over the two-year state budget cycle. Then they pocketed our money. (Just look at your residential property appraisal notice — your home’s value and taxes are soaring as your sp...
Montanans recently received an unpleasant reminder of the perils of bad tax policy in their mail. Spending significant amounts of time in Granite County, I had the displeasure of seeing friends and family face average reappraisals topping 60 percent. Suppose we dive into tax policy developed by the Montana legislative super-majority. We’ll discover a distressing pattern: Working-class homeowners are subjected to massive permanent tax increases, while large corporations enjoy tax relief offset by the aforementioned workers. I...
I was reluctant to come back from Mexico this spring, knowing it would still be cold and wet and cloudy. But I’d gotten used to looking for pretty things while in Mexico. I wanted to share the festivals and the art and the colors. I’d been taking pictures and sharing them on Facebook so my friends and family could see a little bit of the world that surrounded me. Then I got back up north, and it seemed like everything had turned to gray. “This is not a reason to stop takin...
I’m a lawyer and interested in politics. Fortunately, I’ve been able to stay out of Montana tax law for my career, except at a very high level. Is the tax fair? Does it hurt or help those who can least afford to pay? That’s what most democrats ask. This changed when I, like all other Montana homeowners, got my reappraisal notice from Gov. Greg Gianforte’s Department of Revenue and learned my property values had skyrocketed. That, itself, wasn’t news to me, as I watched property sales go out the roof post-pandemic, when out-...
As a proud defender and lover of public land, I have cast deciding votes for Montanans to hike, fish and hunt some of the largest expansions of public land in decades while keeping Montana farmers and ranchers on the landscape. I was recently made aware of a social media campaign soliciting money claiming to fight for interests that I support and will continue to support: local control and public lands. In reality, this campaign would only line the pockets of liberal lawyers to sue me in a case that deserves immediate...
Every day brings its own. Its own what? I can give that sentence a thousand different objects. It’s more fun to leave it open. Use your imagination. Last night brought rain. I love lying in bed listening to the rainfall ping on the roof, plop on the potted palm outside my bedroom window. Rain thuds on the thick, waxy avocado leaves, barely makes a sound on the oleander. Rain, heavenly rain. Finally rain comes to us, not a lot, not with sturm and drang, but rain comes, l...
There are a few things that Montanans of all political persuasions can agree on, and one of them is doing what we can to assure the safety of our kids, and giving them the best start possible for what we hope is a happy, bright and productive future. As a legislator, I am pleased to have advocated and voted in the House of Representatives for proper funding for public education and also for programs aimed at helping keep our children healthy and safe. One such important effort that was successful during the recently...
I have always relied upon my cousin Dane. We grew up together. I’m a year older, but he’s the closest in age of my many cousins. Our families went camping together and bought a cabin up north together, and I’ve gotten into the habit of asking Dane for help whenever I’ve needed it, because Dane is the kind of guy who can be relied upon. Dane works as a stage rigger, and he’s the road manager for a band, so he has to know a lot about a lot of things. He understands electrica...
It seemed like it all happened at once. The heat broke. The rains came. And I spent the night hunched over the commode. It is a wonderful thing when the heat breaks, more-so this year as we sweltered under an unrelenting heat bubble. When the rains come, immediately the temperatures drop, 20 degrees this year. Plants of all species lift their heads and drink largely. Birds lift their beaks in the happiest of songs. Bugs of all descriptions line up outside my door, hoping for e...
Less government and lower taxes!! You hear that political slogan from Republican candidates early and often while they are campaigning. Then comes political reality. How did the largest percentage of Republicans elected in Montana history grow government at the fastest rate in state history — and at the same time raise property taxes on your home? During the pandemic years, the Trump and Biden administrations poured federal funds into states to prop up slowing economies. Funds went directly to state governments and into b...
Despite the fact that we here in Jalisco, Mexico, are still sizzling in a seemingly never-ending, garden killing, daily breaking records heatwave, I promised myself not to write about weather today. What else is there to write about? Ah, ha! Friendship. Michelle’s sister Susan is here visiting for a few days, so the women asked if I’d like to go to breakfast with them the other morning. We decided to go to our favorite coffee shop, Molletes. When they came to pick me up, Mic...
History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Patterns and cycles seem to repeat over time. Almost without exception, perceived threats to the racial, ethnic, or religious majority have triggered populist reactions to change. Ethnic minorities have been persecuted because of race; religious minorities because of faith; women and LGBTQ Americans because of gender and sexuality. Over time, all have found themselves in the crosshairs of the “defenders” of tradition. Most people may think they hold a live-and-let live att...
I spent the week visiting my parents at their retirement home “up north,” and so I got to see them and my mother’s outside pet, Stubby, the red squirrel. I hadn’t seen Stubby since last winter, when he had made an elaborate network of tunnels in the deep snow outside my parents’ window facing the lake. My mother fed him on the ground beneath the bird feeder, and Stubby would pop out of one of his several tunnel entrances to eat, then pop into his tunnel and emerge on the other side. He occasionally had some red squirrel...
In Jalisco, we are held fast in the grips of unrelenting heat and drought. As northeastern Montanans, we all know what that is like. Hot. Dry. Dusty. Depressing. Blue skies. Not a cloud in sight. My tender magnolia flowers all dried up in the fragile bud, turned to brown dust without opening. Even with daily watering, vegetables I planted poked up their little slender heads, looked around, said, “No, not me, uh huh, no, and keeled over.” As each bucket is harvested, I’m leavi...
