News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 2703 - 2727 of 3210
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...
As you read this, the United States has 11 million aspiring citizens who rent or own homes, raise families, work hard, start businesses, pay taxes and do their fair share in thousands of cities and towns across our country. That sounds great, until you realize they live here in second-class status. With the Senate Judiciary Committee opening debate last week on the immigration bill from the bi-partisan "Gang of Eight," we're finally moving toward solving this crisis. Immigrants founded this nation and have played a vital...
I knew that somebody was going to cling to the underside of app data to sneak past the blinded cyclops that control the nation's/world's airwaves, but I didn't expect Facebook to be the first ones out. Facebook announced last week their Facebook Messenger iPhone app, which is separate from regular Facebook app, is now capable of making phone calls. The calls are free and don't use any cellphone plan minutes. And you don't need to use anyone's phone number, just add them on Facebook. Zach White It has been an inevitability,...
Every two years, our citizen legislature meets for 90 days. As your state senator, I wanted to update you on the start of the legislative session, share some perspective on the first days, and let you know how we can stay in touch and engaged over the upcoming months. So far, legislators have maintained a civil approach to one another and with the new governor, Steve Bullock. Even when differences emerge, I hope that civility continues to prevail. Over the upcoming months, you'll be hearing a lot from me about making sure we...
This week, the Office of Public Instruction released its annual Graduation and Dropout Report. For the fourth year in a row, graduation rates were up and dropout rates were down. The credit for this improvement belongs to the school leaders, teachers, students, community members and parents who have put in the work at the local level to make a difference in the lives of hundreds of students who may not have made it to graduation without their efforts. Denise Juneau While we can celebrate this success, we also know that 1,841...
People always say "I'd like to be a fly on that wall," when they're talking about being able to get the inside scoop on the real goings on among people. Reporters, they're always hunting the inside story, the dirt, the scoop, the skinny, the REAL story, but they can't be the secret fly on the wall. They have to declare themselves and their intentions to observe, record and interview. Pam Burke In my expanded capacity at the paper (the one where I'm asked to overcome all my...
Aaron Swartz, a 26-year-old Internet activist facing $1 million in fines and 35 years in federal prison, hanged himself in his New York apartment on Friday. The legal woes that led to him preferring a noose around his neck began in a Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's office in July 2011, when he was charged with "wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer." The charges were later upgraded from four to 13 felony charges. Zach White He faced t...
Pam Burke My 4-year-old horse has super powers: He is naturally impervious to electrical shock. That's a bit of a problem when he lives on a place where electric fencing is used to keep horses out of danger. I know that seems like a bit of a contradiction: deliberate electrocution will keep him out of danger. But it's not like the jolt is powerful enough to stop his heart or anything — if it were I'd be dead several times over by now. It just, y'know, gets your attention a...
It's easy to become downcast in winter, even as mild a winter as this has been thus far, knock on wood, salt over shoulder, sign of the cross. I try to keep an upbeat attitude, but sometimes ... . One seemingly ordinary day last week, I had a fright. The day started as usual: snow fall in the morning filled in my footprints and cat tracks of the day previous, a shout of afternoon sunshine, a bit of breeze. A good day, a good mild winter's day, a day to bless and fill with murm...
The Montana Legislature opens its session this week with lawmakers on all sides promising that this will be a productive session with people working across the aisle to find solutions to problems. We'll see. The Montana constitution mandates that lawmakers meet for 90 days every two years. As the session began Monday, the oft-heard joke was repeated: Montanans would be better off if the Legislature meet for two days every 90 years. John Kelleher It wouldn't be better for the news media that covers the session. Lawmakers this...
More than a decade ago, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously summarized a quandary we face in national security: there are things we know, things we know we don't know, and things we don't know we don't know. Rumsfeld took flak in the media for his wordplay, but the concept he tried to express is one that we face both in and out of the national security arena. In health insurance, for example, we know the cost of insurance and the cost of health care are out of control. Chalk that one up in the "things we know"...
It's not fair to complain about problems, but then never acknowledge or admit when decent solutions are offered. So here I am, after months of writing about the stubborn inertia of industries who fear the mysteries of the future, to say, "good job, movie industry." Zach White There have been numerous steps taken by several movie studios that have caused me to take a step back from the front and say that's pretty cool. One of the biggest changes recently has been the release of several big movies online, through places like...
