News you can use
News you can use
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It is several weeks since the Department of Homeland Security’s admonishment, “If You See Something, Say Something” reached me on Facebook. I don’t remember the accompanying video, I probably didn’t watch it. I do remember the numerous outraged comments about government asking us to spy on each other. The outrage cheered me up: maybe the neighbors aren’t totally paranoid. Then came Homeland Security’s Disinformation Board scheme. The Disinformation Board idea sparked the s...
For the last 100 years the Montana Taxpayers Association has served as Montana’s most trusted resource for nonpartisan tax and government spending information. One of the promises of our mission is to encourage equitable solutions, in issues of taxation, that benefit all Montana taxpayers. As the executive director of MONTAX, I feel it is important to state that our organization believes that CI-121 — a constitutional initiative masquerading as a “cap on property taxes” — does NOT fit that mission. In fact, CI-121 would cre...
I’ve been called ditzy more than once over the years. I’m going to share something I ordinarily would keep to myself because it rather proves the point. Maybe I really am ditzy. I don’t mind. If a thought lazes through my mind several times over a few days, weaving its way into consciousness, I’ve finally learned to pay attention. I’ve been sensing that a retreat would be good. I’d been feeling a little out of balance, especially since my knee was body-slammed near a mont...
Verne knows me too well. For the first time in our lives, my husband, Peter, and I live in a building with a front desk. It’s nice to have someone there when packages are delivered, or contractors show up, and this person is usually Verne. Verne is a natural for the job. He knows everything going on in town. He knows when music is playing in the park and where the food trucks are parked and what time deliveries are made. But what interests Verne most is what goes on inside the...
This past week, I was honored to help bring together educators, the Montana Board of Regents, legislators and agricultural industry leaders for the first Montana Education and Agriculture Showcase. The event couldn’t have happened without planning and assistance from Montana State University-Northern Chancellor Greg Kegel, Sen. Mike Lang, Sen. Shannon O’Brien, Pad McCracken and the great work of Jodi Kueffler, executive secretary for the chancellor. All said and done, 128 people were able to eat a delicious meal entirely sou...
A tic is a frequent unconscious quirk of behavior, and a tick is a hard-to-kill, blood-sucking, parasitic arachnid that causes you to unconsciously and repeatedly scratch your head and body. Tic and tick sound exactly alike. Coincidence? I think not. I wasn’t going to write about ticks. I swear. I’m pretty sure I wrote a column about them last year. I had this whole thing about body part discoveries planned out for today. Brand new body parts. Imagine that. Then the ticks star...
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., recently quipped that it is amazing the Congressional approval rating ever rises to the height of 19 percent. It is not good when only 19 percent of American voters trust Congress to do what needs doing. When people lose faith in government, they are likely to turn to some demagogue who promises to fix everything those weaklings in government are messing up. Unfortunately, authoritarian leaders (aka demagogues) have a history of making things even...
My world is all I have to share. My world is ordinary. It is not much of a gift. Since it is all I have to give, I gladly welcome you through my doorway. Take today. I got up on the “wrong side of bed” so to speak. Instead of getting up when I woke up, I let myself go back to sleep “for just a few minutes.” It’s not like I have a schedule. When I did get out of bed, much later, I felt like I was living in a vat of molasses in January, every movement forced through a fugue sta...
It’s standard strategy in Republican primaries. Every GOP candidate suddenly sounds like a cross between Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman. They all embrace classic Republican philosophies, which in the economic realm, include a strong belief in private initiative and competitive free enterprise as the best means of providing consumers with the most stuff at the least cost. But then something very strange happens on the way to our monthly power bills. Many of these “competitive, free market Republicans” take a detour down...
It’s that time of year again. No, I am not talking about bikini season. I’m talking about bunion season. I did not even know I had a bunion until fairly recently and now, every time I start wearing sandals again, I am reminded that I do. I imagine it was growing on the sly for years before my husband, Peter, brought it to my attention. “You have a bunion,” he said. “I do not!” I immediately answered — because I had no idea what it was. “Yes, you do. Right there, on your foot....
Here’s the thing about Vladamir Putin, he’s a fun-suck, a joy-killer, a joke-hole, the place warmhearted laughter has labeled on its maps as “Here there be dragons,” and like all narcissists, he especially does not like to be on the laughed-at side of a funny situation, so it’s highly unlikely that he’ll be amused that a German wildlife park renamed its Russian wild boar from Putin, in the Russian leader’s honor, to Eberhofer, because almost anything is better than Putin at th...
Given today’s political environment, it is sometimes difficult to recall a time, not so long ago, when working across party lines and seeking compromise on public policy issues was commonplace, expected, and the appropriate way to approach lawmaking. That seems like eons ago. But all is not broken, and fortunately, it’s possible to promote an environment where making public policy is not divisive and mean-spirited. But it takes work. It takes doing our best to understand those with opposing viewpoints and recognizing tha...
Lately, everybody is mad at the Big Four beef packers. Last December, the Biden administration reported that, since the outset of the pandemic, a period when it could be hard to find a steak, cattle prices fell, and beef processing workers were dropping from COVID, the industry had pulled off a 300 percent increase in profits. When JBS settled its piece of a price-fixing lawsuit from a group of grocers against Tyson Foods, Cargill, National Beef and JBS in February, cattlemen...
Editor’s note: This version corrects the comparative income of women versus men. As a woman and a graduate of Montana State University-Northern, then Northern Montana College, I am taking this opportunity to address a few off points made during Northern’s commencement ceremony Saturday. I was highly disappointed state Sen. Brian Hoven used his opportunity of his commencement speech to Northern graduates to promote investment companies and to put voice to the political farce that the United States is threatened by soc...
My grandfather Melvin Running Wolf was only 36 years old when all Native Americans finally gained the right to vote in the United States. Imagine that. Only three generations ago, not all Native Americans could vote in elections due to frivolous state laws that acted as barriers to the ballot box. Although Natives gained their citizenship in 1924 and states were allowed to determine voting rights, many states created laws with the intent to interfere with many people’s right to vote. People like my grandfather, who served i...
Two weeks ago, a shepherd dog running full speed body slammed into my knee. Maiming me was not Chebella’s intent. She was fleeing from my Lolita, half her size, but in full protect-my-mistress mode. Size means nothing in dog world. Lola still quivers, after all these months, when Snowball, an ancient, tottering mini-poodle, growls when we walk past her people. No bones were broken. The doc sent me home to bed and chair. The first week flowed rather smoothly. Leo showed up e...
“You gotta keep poking and clicking,” a friend tells me. “That’s what my daughter does.” By this, she means that learning new technology is not a straight path. I have to play with it. I have to find the process of learning fun and challenging and not get hung up when I make mistakes along the way. I know I’m not the only one who finds the “poke and click” mindset a challenge when I just want to get the darned thing done and move on to something I enjoy. Like reading a book. With real pages. My current frustration is...
Some things in life just make sense - maybe not at first, but eventually you know enough or you stumble into some information or you just get lucky, like the half-finished puzzle, which you've been struggling to assemble without the picture, and all its loose pieces fall onto the floor in such a manner that the puzzle is completely assembled. Ta-dah! And you look at the assembled puzzle image like, "Oh, yeah. Huh. That makes sense." (As a side note, yes, I understand that...
Recently, I canceled a trip to fish for steelhead in Washington because that state closed the Hoh River over historically low returns. This is nothing new to any angler who has followed the trajectory of sea-run fish throughout the Northwest. A deadly cocktail of irresponsible development, climate change, and dams have decimated salmon and steelhead in the lower 48. Fortunately, Montana anglers who dream of taking a trip to chase these species have a critical ally in a Republican member of Congress. Idaho’s Mike Simpson l...
All of us who love Montana are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the state’s Constitution that keeps the power of Americans’ right to vote in the hands of Montana’s citizens. Montana’s Constitution is championed throughout our increasingly imperiled free world for how it protects democracy for its citizens from Fort Peck’s to Flathead’s lakes, from Browning to Billings, from Livingston to my hometown of Shelby. I’m the lucky, straight out of Missoula’s U of M Grizzly who way-back-when staffed delegates from all over the sta...
Thanks to the Supreme Court and the Department of Homeland Security, the partisan bonfire should burn hotter than ever for this year's congressional contests. Not long after the first news of that Supreme Court leak on Roe v. Wade, the Democratic National Committee was running an "Abortion is Healthcare" ad on Facebook with a "chip in to elect Democrats at every level" plea to protect abortion rights, because with a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees, rights are...
Any person raised on the Montana plains knows how precious is every sprout, blade or leaf of green. Precious. We baby each new evidence of life, coddle it, rejoice when it survives the season. Living here in central Mexico with year-round green, flowers, fruits, one learns to do differently. I had to discover how to prune all manner of precious greenery before they morphed into Audrey, the blood-sucking terror from “Little Shop of Horrors” and took over my whole garden wor...
"It's a great time to get old!" That's what my husband, Peter, says. He's right. And getting old is — as the saying goes — better than the alternative. I was thinking this while waiting for my father to get a pacemaker. My father had no idea he needed a pacemaker until two days before he got one. They had been monitoring his heart because he was suddenly so tired that he was getting winded going up a flight of stairs. My dad typically climbs a lot of stairs, so this was not a...
One of us is a Republican legislator representing rural Gallatin County. The other is a Democratic legislator representing the city of Missoula. Despite our political differences, we are committed to taking action to end the crisis at the Montana State Psychiatric Hospital at Warm Springs. The State Hospital’s problems are not new. For more than a decade, federal investigators and disability rights advocates have sounded the alarm about persistent human rights violations against the hospital’s residents. Avoidable falls, pre...
Editor, Public Service Recognition Week, May 1-7, is a time to honor and celebrate past and present public servants across the local, state and federal levels. Recently, public servants have dedicated themselves to keeping our country running while simultaneously dealing with the challenges of a global pandemic. Many, including teachers, nurses, firefighters, law enforcement officers, public transport workers and more, risked their health to serve the American people. Beyond the pandemic, we depend on public servants to prote...
