News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 884 - 908 of 3212
Freedom was at the forefront last week in Helena. This week at the Legislature, we made significant progress in ensuring freedom and protecting liberty for Montanans all across the state. House Bill 702 prohibits discrimination against all Montanans based on their vaccination status. That means employers may not punish or fire employees for personal medical decisions, nor can they require employees to get a COVID vaccination. However, employees must understand the policy manual of the employer. This bill is not an attack on...
I got to pull stitches out of my husband’s face Wednesday and I was so excited about it I did a happy dance while he wasn’t looking. He never wants to let me play doctor on him. I get it — and by that I mean I get it, and I don’t get it all at the same time. John is, let’s say, sensitive. He lives with pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I get that. So a new pain, even — or maybe especially — little pains like from a sliver, cause a sort of excited nervous system respon...
April 3, Montana lost a wise and deeply decent public servant. Stan Stephens, our state's 20th governor, passed away at the age of 91. A native of Calgary, Stan's father suffered a debilitating illness when Stan was a small boy, leaving Stan's mother and her five young sons in perilous circumstances. Trained by his musician father, at the age of seven, Stan was able to use his remarkable gift for music to play trumpet solos in the Calgary Symphony, and soon after as the child...
I’d been out of bed five minutes when I heard the clang-rang of my gate bell. We respect each other’s boundaries. When neighbors visited, they stood out by the gate and yelled, “Sondra, are you home?” I’d lived here a year when I figured there must be a better early-warning system. At the tianguis in town I bought a goat bell. I had a welder make an arch and attach it to the gate so the bell would hang free. When I hear the bell, I go out to the gate and open it for my guests....
“Oh my gosh. I don’t want to open that box.” Moving furniture and books and clothing is easy. It’s moving memories that is hard. I am going through the last of my boxes. I used to say I was not a packrat. I thought I was more like my mother than my dad. My dad might tuck a piece of wood away, thinking it would find a use someday. My mother would be of the opinion that it’s easier to buy a board when (and if) it was needed. Generally, it wasn’t. This approach keeps my parents’ house very tidy — with the possible except...
Montana’s response to the COVID pandemic has put our state’s public health system in the spotlight, as well as into the crosshairs. Through numerous bills this session, members of the Montana Legislature have sought to attack our state’s public health system and insert politics and bureaucracy into the process of making decisions that keep our communities safe and healthy. However, a new poll indicates that these efforts by legislators are driven more by special interests and ideology than by what Montana voters actually want...
While much ado has rightfully been made of the repeated attempts to undermine and privatize Montana’s wildlife hunting access and privileges, less attention has been paid to numerous dirty water bills working their way to Gov. Gianforte’s desk, each of which threatens fisheries, clean water, countless jobs and businesses, and our way of life. Recent rhetoric about cutting the proverbial government red tape is a nice soundbite, but in practice will have the opposite effect of the so-called jobs and recovery focus of this ses...
The issue of plastic bags and garbage blowing out of the landfill has been an ongoing problem from its creation, and a timely subject since Earth Day is April 22. As my husband owned land adjacent to the landfill, we were continually picking up garbage, mostly plastic, from the property and fence lines. Checking cattle one day we discovered a calf nearly dead from trying to ingest a plastic grocery bag sticking partly out of his mouth. Plastic is toxic to cattle, every other type of animal, bird, and fish because of its chemi...
April is always a fast-paced month at the Legislature, and this year is no different. The Senate has been busy voting on a lot of bills that covered a wide variety of topics. I am confident that the bills we passed will improve lives of Montanans in many ways, however nothing is perfect. This past week the Senate passed two critical appropriations bills that will help our state move past the pandemic and sustain prosperity for decades to come. As we decided what to do with the federal stimulus money, Republican leaders in Hel...
The 67th Montana Legislature is turning its back on Montana voters and the public lands we rely on. From Billings to Butte, Great Divide to Glendive, Helena to Havre, Montanans of all stripes find pleasure, beauty, and much of their protein outside. In Montana, we know that our public lands can’t just serve as an empty slogan for politicians to lean on during campaign season. Public lands shape our way of life, our dinner plates, our economic health, and the state we pass down to our children. Back in November, Montanans o...
Apparently, this last Thursday there was a positive COVID test in the Capitol. I was notified late in the day Thursday, and, as of this writing, what will happen this coming week is up in the air. Friday’s Senate floor session and committees were not held. It has given me free time to catch up on communications. I have been getting so many emails this last week for a variety of bills, many in support of or against the same bill. It is clear which bills are controversial to all. With this unprecedented number of emails coming...
We all have a voice, and for good, bad or weird animals do too. NPR’s Madeline Sofia talked March 25 to U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist Sammy Ramsey about cicadas because the annual cicada hatch is coming up soon, and this should be a big year — a big, noisy year, even for the notoriously noisy insect. Cicadas, Ramsey said, come in 23 different broods, or types, that hatch every 13 or 17 years, depending on the particular type of cicada. Brood X, which stands for...
Some days I can’t lose for winning. Sunrise, up earlier than I wanted. I moped around, felt mildly depressed. Not real depression. Real depression is serious stuff. Me, I’m in sort of a down-in-the-dumps lite. Ice-cream for breakfast sounds good. Will ice-cream help? But my freezer is empty. I haven’t had ice-cream for weeks. Back in the easy-peasy days before COVID, I bought hand-packed ice-cream from a woman in town. But knowing precautions were loosely held in that tiend...
The tree was lying on its side when I got to it. It was a nice-looking pine tree, fluffy and full and as tall as me. The strong winds coupled with some unstable footing had caused it to fall over. This seemed too sad to simply walk by. I went over to the tree and, with a little effort, got it standing upright again. It looked much happier. I finished my walk, feeling I had done my part. The next day, it was lying on its side again. I examined it more closely. It had been...
This past Friday was the 68th Legislative Day in Helena. We have 90 days per session to accomplish all we set out to do at the legislature, so that means we are quickly approaching the end of the session. But I am proud of what we have accomplished so far. This past week, the Senate passed House Bill 2, which is the bill that decides the state budget. The budget is split into separate sections, A through E. I presided over the debate and passage of Section A. Section A funds the legislative branch and all the essential parts...
Senate Bill 379 is a bill that is anti-jobs and anti-economic development. For a legislature supposedly focused on the governor’s rightful concerns for entrepreneurship, it’s a real step backward. Higher electricity bills will harm efforts to attract businesses to Montana. I support helping Colstrip, but not at the expense of every other business in Montana. I have been part of the Billings’ business community for more than 40 years and have served a half dozen governors, both Republicans and Democrats. In the early ’80s,...
State legislators are rushing a massive overhaul of our income tax system through the legislature at the last minute. Senate Bill 399 would cost the state millions in revenue and result in one in five Montanans paying more in income taxes. Sen. Hertz, R-Polson, introduced this bill on March 26. It was heard in committee less than a week later. The committee voted just minutes after the hearing, sending it to the Senate floor where it passed on a largely party line vote five days later. Normally a bill of this magnitude and...
After surviving the past year, 2017 seems like a lifetime ago. But for individuals with disabilities, it was a pretty memorable and terrible year in Montana. As a reminder, in 2017 Montana experienced a revenue downturn, and the Executive and Legislature responded with cuts. The Department of Public Health and Human Services experienced the deepest cuts. The Legislature made cuts to programs helping seniors and people with disabilities stay in their homes, to chemical dependency treatment, and also closed 19 rural public assi...
Voters turned out in record numbers in 2020. Hundreds-of-thousands of folks in our state cast their ballots and exercised their most fundamental right as an American. Unfortunately, Republicans across the nation and here in Montana are working around the clock to take that right away. Today there are 361 bills introduced across 47 states to make it harder for eligible American voters to cast a ballot. In Arizona, Republican lawmakers responded to election losses by quickly introducing a voter suppression bill to make it...
Have you ever been the victim of an automobile accident and had the other driver’s insurance company partially blame you for the accident and require you to pay part of the claim? Nearly every driver in the United States will submit an insurance claim at some point in their life. We buy auto insurance to protect ourselves and our property in case of an accident. Few insured people realize that if they are involved in an accident, even if the other party was mostly at fault, they can find themselves on the hook for part of the...
Judy and I spent a few days home for the short, long Easter break. Our daughter, family and a friend were down from Cut Bank and Butte for Easter Dinner. It was fun sharing the day with everyone and getting help with a couple projects needing extra hands. The weather allowed us to spend some of the day outside and just wander around the farm visiting about what everyone is up to. We all need days like that. It was great to see farmers out seeding and seeing all the spring activity. We are getting back to Helena and finding...
It’s hard to pretty up a home when you have all the decorating instincts of an average sixth-grader. I have countered this lack of style savvy, though, with all the ambition and focus of that sixth-grader’s twin. Given the state of my character, and the fact that I am sitting here in the deteriorating wasteland of our old trailer house, while we whittle away at finishing building our new home – which is going slowly largely because “design decisions are haaaaaard,” as I like...
Instead of tackling coal revenue and job loss, Montana Republicans tabled HB646, substituting an alternative 2023 “study” about dwindling coal use. The “study” will be too late for coal-impacted communities like Sidney; its Lewis and Clark Power Plant just closed. MDU will employ shuttered plant workers. However, that doesn’t help those who serviced the plant, like Westmoreland’s Savage miners. HB646 would assist them. When helping little ones, we don’t “study” what happened. We change the diaper. Likewise, change now will b...
I used to have a photo of my Dad in his crisp uniform, just back from Overseas. “Overseas” is a lost word, known to us older folks. Dad was in the Army Air Force in WWII. I was eight months old when he got home. In the picture, Dad held me in one arm, me in my cloth coat with matching winter pants. In his other hand he held a cigarette. I don’t know what happened to the photo. My Dad had smoked since he was eight years old, rolling corn silk out behind the barn. He lived...
It’s amazing that anyone shares a bed. I know there are plenty of married and cohabiting couples who have separate beds, or even separate bedrooms, and I can see the logic in avoiding the snoring, the thrashing, the different sleep schedules, and the need to negotiate the complicated issue of bedding. But since marrying and moving into Peter’s house, we have shared a bed, and it is not a large one. So far, we have negotiated a peaceful settlement. This is because Peter has...
