The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
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Nowadays, we have labels for everything, and everyone. The labeling has separated and divided us. Instead of being human, we are now labeled based on our skin color, religious beliefs, political beliefs, sexual preference or orientation, beliefs about the environment, the friends we keep, and the hobbies we engage in. We have labels that define our status in the world based on our income. Upper class, middle class, lower class, or upper echelon, blue collar, and impoverished....
I just wanted to reach out and say thank you. I had several of you in the community reach out via phone, text, and email to thank me for my original response to Liz Cain's letter to the editor in the Blackfoot Valley Dispatch. I appreciate your feedback on my response and want you to know that it means a lot to me that it resonated with so many of you. I additionally want to say thank you to Liz for her response last week. She was kind enough to send me an email with her...
Where in the world did our summer go? If you're anything like me, the list of the "stuff to get done before the snow flies," is still as long as it was at the beginning of summer. I had such high hopes for getting things done, being organized and ahead of the game. Instead, it's the end of September and I want to know where the summer went. I know a lot of people have blamed a lot of things on COVID this year, and rightfully so, but somehow I don't think I can lay this one on...
Thanks to the BVD for supporting its community and businesses. Our small town newspaper is one of the foundations of our community and I am thankful to have it. There are so many things I would never know about the what's happening around town even though we live and work right in town now. This is especially true of things going on in the state and in our county that pertain to Lincoln but wouldn't be brought to our attention without our local paper. I, personally, would...
Here in Montana we are granted the right to vote on ballot initiatives once they clear a number of hurdles, including having the related petition garner enough qualifying signatures. Not achieved, however, is the ability to hold public hearings on the proposed issue – such as is accomplished during legislative debate, fiscal review and the amendment process. On November 3rd, we will be voting on CI-118 which would legalize marijuana here in Montana. Aside from what the p...
The article written by K. F. Plumlee would have been great had it been written in the 1950’s. Today’s Democratic Party is not the same philosophically as in those earlier years. Today’s agenda is to turn the United States into the Socialistic States of America. Harry Truman and John Kennedy would have been extremely conservative Republicans today. You mention the Constitution – why are the Democrats trampling it? Their ultimate goal on the 2nd Amendment is to abolish it. On the corporations hit, where would the working...
Dear readers of the BVD, Please allow me to straighten things out, if I can. First of all, I appreciated Tammy Jordan’s response to my letter of shock over the VOTE WISELY ad. Actually, I mostly agreed with her, and I learned (again) how careful one must be with words. But may I say that some readers might have been a bit more careful about what they read into my words. In my letter of September 10, I pointed out where I was in full accord with some of the Republican opinions in their ad and that, after all, I had voted Repub...
I have learned a lot over the past few months. If you watch Fox news; Democrat run cities are experiencing riots by supposed protesters for racial justice. ABC, NBC, and CNN portray this as “largely peaceful” patriots protesting racism while racist police and white supremist provoke them into burning down buildings, stealing flat screen TVs and designer Tennis shoes. Based on Democrat politicians claims that this country is overwhelmingly and systemically racist; I fully expected hundreds of thousands of racists to des...
Montana is built on hard work. The working women and men of this state - the linemen, miners, laborers, boilermakers, law enforcement officers, and teachers - are the ones who keep Montana running. Without workers, and the labor unions that fight for them, Montana as we know it today would not exist. But now more than ever those workers are under threat. With us in office, they will have a pair of fighters willing to stand up and defend them as governor and attorney general. W...
In general, I'm a pretty early riser. I've always been this way. When I was younger, there were animals that needed caring for before heading off to school, and in the summertime, they needed caring for before the heat of the day set in. When I was a new mother, it was the hour of silence before my kids woke up, giving me time to think and plan for the day ahead. When I was a young working mother who decided to go back to college, those two quiet hours before anyone in the...
After reading last week's guest opinion in BVD Viewpoints I felt compelled to share some of my own viewpoints along with a few facts...the first opinion being that its title should have read THREE kinds of persons under the Constitution. Karen Frank-Plumlee failed to mention the Labor Unions. The Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United (which is said to have fueled the rise of super PACS) also allowed equal footing for Labor Unions. Last I checked, Labor Unions are unable to v...
Where I grew up in Southern Cal-ifornia, I remember learning about seasons in elementary school. The teacher had it up on a bulletin board. Winter began in December and end-ed in February. March through May was springtime, June through August brought the heat of summer, and Sep-tember through November equaled fall. Honestly, in Southern California, I feel like seasons are more of a myth than a reality, but it was some-thing we all learned about in school nonetheless. When I...
The work of the 2019 legislative session has come full circle on two bills vetted in the Senate State Administration Veterans' Affairs Committee which I chaired. One was SB275 (Senator Olzewski-R) and HB524 (Representative Weatherwax-D) that brought attention to needs for recognition of two different subjects. SB275 gave five years to raise $165,000 to commemorate our first woman governor, Judy Martz. HB524 requested a tribal monument with a flag circle on capitol grounds and...
The preamble to our US Constitution reads: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." It has become clear since the US Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United that there are two kinds of...
I want to address Liz Cain's letter with a dose of reality. Just because you don’t agree with the ad in question, and just because you personally find it offensive, does not make it wrong and you right. It was an advertisement. They are printed all the time. Generally people who don’t agree with them see them and just move on. I believe a lot of people in our community have done just that when they saw the ad from the Frank-Plumlees. What I will agree with you on is the fact that there is a huge divisiveness in our wor...
Dear Editor, I am writing in support of Greg Gianforte for Governor. I believe Greg understands the dire economic position our state is in, and has a game plan for recovery. Before the plandemic (not a typo), Montana ranked 49th in the nation in household income, as reported by Prospera. We barely had an economy going into 2020. Our current governor had no business shutting down our businesses. I believe Greg would never hobble our ability to prosper. Greg believes in school choice. Greg also appreciates religious and...
The Lewis and Clark County elections is hearing from people who are concerned about the security of the upcoming election. It can be hard to get accurate information about how elections work; conversations happen at the national level, but elections are administered locally with different laws in each state. Adding to this confusion, we know from our election security training that foreign entities are deliberately spreading disinformation about our elections through social...
It’s said that if you have one good friend, you have been blessed. I’ve been blessed with very good friends, and some not-so-great friends throughout my life. I’ve learned lessons from both and I’m grateful. I’ve unfortunately had to learn the same lesson from those not-so-great friends on repeated occasion. And, sometimes, it’s been my really close friends who point it out and help me through some of those repeatedly difficult lessons to learn. As most of you who know me kno...
When I read the ad VOTE WISELY in the August 27th BVD, and in another one since, I was shocked. Then I was angry, and then I was sad. How can decent, educated, reasonable people of faith and good character tell such lies about their fellow citizens in a small town newspaper or even believe such falsehoods, as if they can't think for themselves, about Democrats in Montana and across the nation? Sure, there are extreme individuals and groups far left of center who might have...
My musical taste is eclectic to say the least, and I have many people to thank for my wide variety of musical likes. To start, I come from a long line of music in one sense or another. My grandparents, my parents, aunts, uncles, school, friends and, well, even myself. When I was very young, I remember listening to "The Day the Music Died" and "Cats in the Cradle" because they played on a small radio that sat on my parent's dresser while I helped my mom make the bed. My Uncle...
We want to thank Connie Guegold so much for the beautiful eagle sculpture that was placed on our tree stump. What an awesome surprise we had seeing it, and we are enjoying it so much. As we walk down the road our eyes capture the wonderfulness of other carvings. What joy they bring to all of us! Thank you again Sienna,John Burns and family Lincoln...
Governor Bullock has issued another edict. This time, it's taking away your right to choose how you vote in the November general election. While I didn't publicly oppose an all-mail ballot for the June primary election, it was a different time – we were still evaluating the coronavirus and its effect on Montana. Today, doctors have improved treatment and thousands of businesses across Montana have been able to operate by taking precautions to keep their customers safe. S...
Let’s face it, life is all about choices. The ones we make, the ones that are made for us, and even the ones we don’t make, which technically are still a choice. There are everyday choices, like what do I wear or what do I have to eat, to life-changing choices, like do I take this new job, or do I move across the country or marry this person, and every choice in between. We’re making choices from the time we are very young, usually right up until the time our lives on earth ar...
Watching Fox I saw what I thought was violence and property destruction in Portland, Chicago, New York City, Minneapolis: Democratic controlled cities. I tuned in to CNN, NBC and found out that Fox was misleading me. What I saw was patriotic Democrats exercising their rights to "largely" peaceful protest against Systemic racism. I wondered why the police were ordered by Democrats not to protect property and people and the general consensus was that the police were infected...
America is under siege. We are threatened by an enemy that is undermining the very foundations of our Constitution and the American values that have created, in the words of Ronald Reagan, the world’s “shining city on a hill.” This war against the heartland is not being waged by our traditional global adversaries or even the jihadist terrorists who have vowed to destroy America and everything in it. This is a battle being fought from within. It’s a war that cannot be defended nor defeated by our great military or policed...