News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 2675 - 2699 of 3193
We’ve seen a lot of hand-wringing over coal trains lately. But frankly, railroads are an essential part of Montana’s growth, more now than probably since the first tracks were laid in the state more than 100 years ago. Whether coal trains, grain trains, lumber trains or oil trains — it’s all good for Montana. It’s a sign that more people are working, more wealth is being created, our economy is strengthening and our tax base is expanding. The fact is, the increase in rail traffic our state is experiencing is related t...
I don’t understand the concept of boredom. As a child my family made sure that if I even looked bored, I got handed a do-list. I distinctly remember a time, when I was single-not-by-choice and raising my kids, when I prayed daily, please, let me experience boring. While I wasn’t exactly operating on the crisis of the moment, every day was hand-to-mouth and I certainly had tapped into the fast moving physics of cause/effect. My requests for boring were denied. I got “di...
Stupid country music — making me weepy again! I didn’t used to be such a bawl-baby. But a couple kids, a divorce and the realization that I’m officially a thirty-something have all combined to make this girl a little more fragile than she used to be. So, what do I do about it? I find myself once again over-sharing my two-cents with perfect strangers in a column resurrected from the dusty files of the Havre Daily News. For some reason, I guess I find this place, and this colum...
For some time, urban tribal members have sat in silence, listening to and reading news media reports about complaints, whistle blowing and investigations that include Ken Blatt's high profile public statements of indictments as well as challenging the council action to terminate him for cause. I have known Ken for some time. He is a product of Moccasin Hats in Helena. He is an enrolled member of the tribe. We haven't dug into who enrolled him the the tribe. He is an established auto mechanic. Known to have a forceful...
In four terms in the Montana legislature few decisions have been as difficult as whether or not to uphold Gov. Steve Bullock’s veto on House Bill 12. It passed with bipartisan majorities in both chambers. It appears to be a bill every Democrat, including the governor, would want to support. It increases funding to health care providers who serve the most vulnerable, many on Medicaid. Funding for increases to these providers was cut in 2010 as we struggled with the economic devastation of the Great Recession. Many programs t...
The Montana Historical Society is planning a yearlong celebration of women's contributions to Montana next year, the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the state. The H. Earl Clack Museum plans to join the celebration and got off to an early start Saturday. As part of Living History, the museum held tea parties honoring Margaret Turner Clack, H. Earl Clark’s wife. Judi Dritshulas, the museum board’s chair, portrayed Margaret Turner Clack. She passed around pictures of the Clacks. In each one, Mrs. Clack wore beads, so i...
Researchers have discovered that humans aren’t humans so much as we are walking petri dishes of single-cell organism called microbes. Yes, that means we are covered with fungus, bacteria and mold. And, no, we are most definitely not in charge. Rob Knight, who is like a rock star of microbial researchers (complete with a website at Knightlab.colorado.edu), says that if we could separate microbes from human cells then the blob of microbes would be about equivalent to the size o...
Some cities are wondrous things. Organisms at once propagating and receding, a single entity with parts living and others dying. We don’t often experience whole cities where success and despair are partners, growth and decay lie side by side, and history’s tumult remains visible. I grew up in such a place — Butte, Mont. Last month I visited another — Detroit, Mich. I had never been there, but my friend Brian, who grew up south of Detroit, invited me to visit. I had earlier...
As governor, my top priority is job creation. To create jobs, we need a strong economy. Running a tight fiscal ship and balancing the state budget are critical for our economic strength. But a balanced budget is not just a good idea, it’s the law. The Montana Constitution requires our elected Legislature to do only one thing: pass a balanced budget. I understand there has been some frustration that I vetoed a bill that would have provided additional money for infrastructure i...
When did the sage grouse become a national priority surpassing energy independence, and does this fowl really require millions of acres of energy-rich land to survive? Those are the obvious questions that arise when reading the Bureau of Land Management’s recent 812-page Resource Management Plan for the Hi-Line. The document, released this spring and currently out for public comment, is a good example of the unfortunate trend toward declaring Montana off-limits to d...
One windy day last October, I tripped over a leaf-covered obstruction in the sidewalk and broke my wrist. Looking back, my painful wrist was the first catalyst I can identify that began to steer my thinking in the direction of a major life change. Since my accident, I can no longer do a lot of things I used to be able to carry off with panache. Just yesterday the man I hired to do some yard work I can’t handle any more — stuff involving a wheel barrow and pitch fork — asked...
It comes as no surprise that much of the budget surplus that Montana has enjoyed for the last eight years has come from energy and natural resource development. Oil and gas efforts across Montana, especially our eastern-most counties, has provided opportunity across the state and revenue flows to help fund our government services on the state and local level. It comes with surprise and dismay that Gov. Bullock chose to veto a strong bipartisan bill, House Bill 218, which provides much-needed assistance to our eastern...
Little Chazlie Cripps, 4 1/2, and Tristan Riggle, 6, gave me a lot of hope Monday morning. They were standing on the sidewalk awaiting the start of the annual Memorial Day services at the Hill County Courthouse. Tristan was in his little car, and Chazlie was passing out poppies to the crowd, a fundraising event to help area veterans. Chazlie’s grandma, Kim Cripps, and Tristan's grandpa, Keith Doll, were talking about how they can explain Memorial Day to kids that young. I...
Last month, after the fire and explosion in West, Texas, and shortly after one of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's business recruiting trips to California, to lure companies to relocate in “business friendly” Texas, a cartoon appeared in the Sacramento Bee, showing the governor making one of his pitches for businesses to come to Texas where there are “Low Taxes” and “Low Regulations” and where “Business is booming in Texas!” The next panel of the cartoon shows the blast at West Fertilizer, exclaiming a large “BOOM!” in red letters and...
This letter is in response to “The public has the right to know,” in Norman Bernstein's column “Consider This,” published in the Havre Daily News Wednesday, May 15, on page A4. What the public has a right to know is that the library is under very capable management. I respond in defense of the library and library board. I do not have any official position and no one has asked me to write this letter to the editor. Mr. Bernstein no longer lives in our community. Therefore he should not be judging decisions made in our communi...
The IRS tempest in a teapot should not be about how the IRS investigates political organizations that file for 501(c)4 tax-exempt status. Rather, it should be about why we have thousands, or, for that matter, any, tax-exempt political non-profits in the first place. This tax-exempt status, especially the 501(c)4 organizations, rather than the usual 501(c)3 nonprofits, is rightly subjected to more than the usual IRS scrutiny because these are the organizations most likely to misuse their status. They are not required to make...
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 nur...
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 secon...
The Havre-Hill County Library has been a focus of social life in the city and county for the more than 30 years that Bonnie Williamson was the library director. She made the library the weekly center for dozens of public service and assistance programs and year-round free arts, humanities and current events programs. Children's programs brought dozens of young people into the library every week to enjoy the interactive story-telling, music, dance, poetry, and writing events. It was a vibrant and dynamic place. Under...
If talk is cheap, political talk is even cheaper. We can thank our governor for reminding us of this, when he vetoed two bills, unanimously endorsed by the PSC, that would have provided consumers with well-deserved protection against rising energy costs. Steve Bullock won the election by convincing enough people that his brand of Big Government would somehow help working folks and people on fixed incomes. But the game is over, the crowd went home, and the scoreboard reads: Radical Environmentalists: 2. Working Stiffs: 0. Sena...
On April 24th, at 9 a.m., in a crowded suburb of the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka, the eight-story Rana Plaza building, completed in 2010, collapsed, killing more than 800 workers trapped in the rubble, with more still missing. In 2007, the local mayor had illegally issued a building permit for a five-story building. The owner, Muhammed Sohel Rana, a wealthy member of the ruling national Awami Party, had added another three stories, without adequate foundation, and without any permit. According to the building's architects,...
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 that...
I came across the derelict structure a short few years ago when I was driving my van crammed with furniture and boxes on my move back home to Montana. The building obviously had been long abandoned. A corner of the roof threatened to collapse. Windows were broken and a door hung loose. A warped and peeling sign across the front announced that this heap of debris had once been the Cajun Café. A homemade “For Sale” sign stood staked in the yard. “You’re a long way from Louisiana...
Montanans are no strangers to conflict over coal. It was four decades ago when multinational mining companies began buying coal seams in southeastern Montana, and it sparked debate with ranchers concerned for grazing lands and water. Today ranchers in the region are again worried about expansion of coal operations. Many now have years of experience with the damage the industry does to clean water. But there’s another important difference today: how much farther concerns about coal have spread. My family and I grow wheat n...
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. — P.J. O’Rourke The dust hasn’t totally settled on the legislative session ... we don’t yet have the final fiscal results of Gov. Steve Bullock’s vetoes. But the picture’s beginning to take shape, and for those who believe in limited government and slower bureaucracy growth, that picture isn’t pretty. Starting with almost half a billion surplus, a coalition of Democrats and swing-vote, squishy Republicans blew through that surplus plus...
