The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
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As a hunter and angler who's lived in the Upper Clark Fork River valley between Deer Lodge and Anaconda for more than 30 years, I can attest to the damaging legacy of mining on our waterways. In 1908, a massive flood carried toxic mine tailings from Butte down the Clark Fork River, contaminating the river and the floodplain. To this day, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to clean up these toxic mine tailings in Butte, Silver Bow Creek, and the river. For 30...
As a farmer, I know firsthand that good things take time. Every year, I plant my fields with crops like wheat, barley, peas, and saffron, and in July, August, and September, I harvest those crops and reap what I've sown. Writing laws is much the same – and this fall, after a long spring and summer of working with Republicans and Democrats, Montana is set to reap urgently-needed upgrades to our crumbling infrastructure and strong economic growth across our state, thanks to m...
I am a 68-year-old, retired farmer, fourth generation Montanan, and a lifelong avid hunter, angler, and conservationist with a degree in Wildlife Biology and research experience on large predators. I started farming in 1977. Now I own Circle S Ranch in eastern Montana and pay property taxes in five counties. I have always shared the bounty of the ranch with sportsmen and conservationists for free. No one has ever paid a dime for access. My wife and I have been engaged in conse...
I'm running to be the next member of Congress from Montana's eastern district because I've devoted my life to this state's people, land and wildlife. It pains me to see our lone representative in the U.S. House of Representatives, Matt Rosendale, ignore the needs of the people he was elected to represent. He voted against badly needed pandemic relief across Montana and the rest of America, declines to challenge the price-gouging of corporate meatpackers who are driving family...
On Oct. 13, a number of the area’s elected officials received an invitation from the Lewis and Clark County Elections Supervisor providing a number of opportunities to observe and learn about the voting process in the County. I want to thank the staff for sharing their training process for tracking and counting returned ballots. Included in the Oct. 15 training was the office’s process to verify signatures on the return envelopes, the reconciliation steps, and the paper cha...
Every day I open my E-mail account and see attempts to defraud and steal. I know I have to be very careful what I open or risk identity fraud or losing everything I have to someone who will manipulate my information to take over my accounts and titles. Law enforcement can do very little to help because these criminals usually live in other parts of the world and are hard to trace. It is disturbing to realize that the computer we all now must use is more dangerous than the...
I was shocked to learn last week that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has directed the FBI and federal prosecutors to charge parents who speak up at school board meetings under domestic terrorism and civil rights laws. Acting U.S. Attorney for Montana Leif Johnson delivered this message to the Montana County Attorneys Association, and has provided a follow-up letter explaining the federal claim of urgency in this matter. As a local prosecutor enforcing Montana state...
October is here, leaves are falling, and perhaps Montanans should not be surprised that the Montana Democrats on the Districting and Apportionment Commission are carving up our state like a pumpkin. While they claim they want to create a "competitive" district, their maps go far beyond that. So far in fact, that they fail to meet the mandatory criteria in the Montana Constitution, that the districts be as equal in population as is practicable, be contiguous, and be compact....
Democrats, led by President Biden, Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi, are rushing a reckless $3.5 trillion tax and spending spree bill through Congress that would reshape the very foundation of America and push the U.S. down the path of socialism. The Democrats’ massive bill is the largest spending bill in our nation’s history and will create all sorts of new entitlement programs. To pay for it, Democrats plan to hike taxes across the board, making this bill the...
There is an ongoing battle regarding the $3.5 trillion reconciliation plan proposed by the Biden Administration, which includes a provision that would require financial institutions, such as our credit unions, to report to the IRS transactional data for any account with at least $600 of inflows or outflows annually. This unlimited access to consumers' financial data should raise alarms for anyone with a bank or credit union account. First and foremost, this plan violates...
(Sept. 29) This month, U.S. Senators began the markup of Democrats' $3.5 trillion budget resolution package. This rubber-meets-road moment seems to have given pause to some in their party whose votes will be needed to get a bill through Congress and across the President's desk. Among them is Montana's Senator Jon Tester. The President and the progressive left members of Congress have proposed financing the Administration's marquee spending bill largely by raising the U.S....
As a prosecutor I once was assigned a case where-in the Highway patrol watched a man load up his truck with railroad ties from a pile next to the tracks. After he left the siding and was on a public road, they made a stop and arrested him for theft. Sounds like an open and shut case doesn't it? Problem was the railroad couldn't prove they owned the ties. They were not marked and are purchased in bulk then distributed where needed by a variety of workers, identities unknown....
Hidden away deep within the massive, $3.5 trillion Congressional budget package is a ticking time bomb for Montana's economy. The innocuous sounding Clean Energy Payment Program is actually the left's latest scheme to eliminate affordable, reliable fossil fuel energy. If they are successful, we'll all pay more and at the same time the reliability of our electricity grid will be diminished. Worse, energy-producing states like Montana will pay the price in terms of lost jobs...
As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, I've been thinking a lot about the 9/11 Commission, which I co-chaired with former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean. Not just the work the commission did, but the work it didn't do-and the work that remains to be done. The commission was formally established in November of 2002, though it didn't start in earnest until the following spring. It consisted of five Republicans and five Democrats, all of whom had held high f...
The Montana Nurses Association has referred to the recent emergency rule from Montana DPHHS regarding not masking in school as "promotion of junk science." One might be wise to use caution as well as introspection in using such a bold statement. MNA expressed frustration that the department did not site peer reviewed studies in explaining its rule. For every peer reviewed study showing the effectiveness of masks, one could find at least as many showing they are not effective...
Maybe it's just a professional preoccupation, but I've always been intrigued by why voters cast their ballots as they do. I've never made a formal study of it but have talked with plenty of them over the years, and one thing sticks with me from those conversations: There's no one thing. People find a myriad of interesting-and sometimes idiosyncratic-reasons for voting this way or that. Some care mostly about a single issue-abortion, say, or climate change-and if a politician d...
Conversations over the past few months reflect a lot of concern about Montana's children returning to school, and the curriculum being provided there. One thing's for certain -- families are becoming increasingly vocal about the public school environment. This is underscored by the parents who have necessarily become much more engaged with their children's school work since the 2020 onset of the pandemic. Parents have been more involved in their children's on-line and...
Perhaps one of the most personal decisions you can make every day is deciding what to eat. But what happens when multinational corporations in the agricultural industry take that power away from the individual by using their size, wealth and power to determine the price and selection on our grocery shelves? For these conglomerates to influence what we consume, they first need to control the people who produce our food. That is where the corporations' real power lies:...
I used to dismiss as a peculiar form of psychosis, the desire of some troubled souls to silence and censor the right of others to speak and think freely. After all, the impulse to gag the mouth and shut the mind of another individual is hardly what we would call "normal." Compelling others to conform to our views isn't very normal either. Doing such things never enters the minds of healthy, rational people. It's creepy. ational people understand that living in a free society...
In Montana private land elk hunting is moving toward 11 weeks for people who can pay thousands of dollars for trophy bulls, while others are left to hunt cows in deep snows and bitter cold when they're struggling to survive the winter. That's the proposal of the Gianforte administration, one that extends "elk shoulder seasons" through Feb 15 annually, and onto your National Forest in 19 hunting districts. This proposal is ill conceived, premature and not in the interest of...
The environmental groups have caused a serious problem. Every time the Forest Service plans to remove the beetle killed trees while the trees are still good for lumber, the environmental groups get a lawsuit in court until the trees are no longer any good, then they drop the lawsuit. We now have deadfall on top of deadfall. It's no wonder bears are coming into town, they couldn't get to the berries if there were some. I watched a gentleman and a young lady on NBC News who...
While not of the gun-slinging Wild West lore, there is a battle being waged in Montana. The future of the Smith River and the health of the surrounding water quality and habitat is at stake. If Montanans lose, the casualty will be the natural resources that set Montana apart. In April, Montana green-lighted construction of the Black Butte copper mine north of White Sulphur Springs. This location is troublesome as it is adjacent to and directly underneath Sheep Creek, the most...
In theory there is nothing wrong with a celebration of emancipation. The freeing of the slaves was one of the great steps forward for this country, an end to the darkest chapter in American history. But we don't live in theory. Our politics happens in practice, and in practice the vote that elevated "Juneteenth National Independence Day" to the status of a federal holiday is a disaster for those who hold that our country is good, our Constitution a great charter of liberty,...
I, like so many Montana hunters, have been blessed to enjoy a lifetime of world-class hunting and fishing. It's why so many of us live here, and it speaks to the decades of work that Montanans have put into conserving and managing our public wildlife for the benefit of everyone. But after this legislative session, it is clear that Montana is on a different path, one that disregards science and places the ability for some to profit off of our wildlife as the highest priority....
A recent thoughtful and well-reasoned Attorney General's Opinion on "critical race theory" from Austin Knudsen has people on the left stamping their feet and pulling out their hair. The Montana Democrats' spin machine is on full blast to justify racial discrimination in Montana schools, universities, and workplaces. In defense of the controversial teachings, liberal lawyers, legislators, and editorial boards are arguing that actively being racist is the only way to make sure...
