News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 151 - 175 of 3107
It’s seven minutes after 10 p.m., and the usual ruckus ensues. My husband, Peter, is wearing earplugs. He is in the habit of doing this when we’re staying in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, because our little apartment is right in the center of town and, like all the homes in San Miguel, there is no air conditioning because it is cool this high in the mountains. But the last few weeks have been warm, and it’s nice to have fresh air. So we open the sliding door to our littl...
Growing up in Butte, Montana, I remember watching “The Wizard of Oz” in my family’s living room, mesmerized by the fiery, all-powerful Oz and wondering who he really was. His booming voice. His power over the lives of everyday creatures in Oz, all pining for something they needed. And then there was the big reveal. As Oz’s voice booms over Dorothy and her new friends, Toto bites the emerald curtain and pulls it back to reveal … a disheveled man frantically pushing buttons to maintain his oh-so-powerful façade. “Pay no at...
I’ve had several dogs along these many years but never had one get a hot spot. In July, about the time the storms, pitiful as they have been, began blowing and blustering, Lola started chewing at the base of her backbone, right above where her tail attaches. It worried me. Leo helped me corral her between my knees and we sprayed her with the purple stuff, you know, the stuff you use on cows and horses when they get a barbed wire cut or some such. I was wearing white pants that...
Anyone driving Montana’s highways knows the risk of colliding with deer and other wildlife. Hardly a mile goes by without the gruesome reminders of hit animals, broken bumpers, or smashed headlights scattered on the shoulder. According to the Bozeman-based Western Transportation Institute, collisions with wildlife can be reduced by up to 85 percent with the installation of wildlife crossing infrastructure such as fencing and under and overpasses. Such installations have been effective in several western states, including Neva...
Every day, whether here in Mexico or in the U.S., I take a walk. Walking in the morning would be nice, but that’s when I write, and so in the afternoon, I head out to see what the world looks like. I always greet a lot of people on my walk, no matter which country I am in. I talk to dogs if there are dogs involved, or I comment on the weather, or I compliment what someone is wearing, or I simply say, “Hello.” I do pretty much the same thing in either country, and my ability to...
Hundreds of thousands of Montanans count on the Social Security payments that they’ve earned through a lifetime of hard work. Currently, 244,937 Montanans receive Social Security. Those payments inject more than $4 billion into the state’s economy every year. Social Security is a guaranteed source of income. For most older Montanans, Social Security is their only reliable inflation-protected income. It helps them keep up with rising prices. Moreover, they can’t outlive the payments. So it’s no surprise that an overwhe...
This summer, many people around the country experienced extreme weather — heat, drought, thunderstorms, and flooding. After undergoing the hottest July on record, there is a sense of urgency about addressing climate change. The good news is we have an abundance of clean energy resources in this country that don’t emit greenhouse gasses, the primary factor that is causing the climate to change. The problem is that our electrical transmission system is out-of-date and we are unable to move all that clean energy around. We nee...
Life. Huh. It is hard not to label things, situations. Oh, that is bad. Oh, that is good. We don’t really know if what we call bad might not be really good. Hey, voice of experience here. Often, what I thought was the worst decision, the worst situation, in my life, turned out to be my greatest gift. Likewise, the opposite. Uh huh, both ways. Wait and see. Arrgh. Easy for you to say. I can tell you what I think, hope, fear, all conjecture. I think my son has lost his last w...
So, I got a cold. If you catch a cold in the winter, everyone is sympathetic. They tell you to drink hot tea and put on another sweater. A cold in the winter just seems like part of the season, and I can turn the thermostat up and wait it out. A summer cold is totally different. A summer cold seems like an act of idiocy. A summer cold feels like I’m being difficult on purpose. I feel I must have done something really stupid — because who gets sick in the middle of the sum...
The Bill of Rights has become controversial. Some think we need a disinformation board to save us from an excess of First Amendment’s free speech. Not that long ago, a retired Supreme Court justice opined we’d be better off without the Second Amendment, and the Fourth Amendment has been optional ever since we got the Patriot Act 20 years ago. But nobody has anything to say about the Third. The Third Amendment is brief. “No Soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any h...
The 2023 Montana wildfire season was slow to start. Average snowpack combined with rain in much of the state, spared an early fire season. Recent hot days and dry fuels, however, have now put Montana into active fire season with over 40,000 acres burned by early August. Montana’s average annual temperatures have been getting hotter and are currently 2.7 degrees F warmer than at the start of the Industrial Revolution. This warming fuels wildfires, drought, snowpack loss and extreme heat. In late July, Gov. Greg Gianforte a...
Yesterday, an email from Jerry pinged into my inbox. (See, I can talk modern too.) Jerry is a high school classmate, Harlem, Class of ’63. Back in ’05 I attended my first class reunion, or was it ’06. No matter. Surprisingly, several classmates showed up, we met in clusters, here and there, discovered we wanted more time together. Back in that other world, we had been a tight class, maybe because there were so few of us. At any rate, we determined to meet annually. And we di...
The American GI Forum, American Veterans for Equal Rights Transgender and Diverse Veterans of America Action Group and numerous other organizations from around the nation recently denounced amendments to the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024, that would deny reproductive health care and gender affirming care to veterans of the U.S. military. We stand united in our opposition to any language in the 12 bills that make up the Omnibus Appropriations package that seeks to break...
I see him painting every afternoon. Every day I take a walk and, when I am in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, my walk usually takes me through an old fabric mill that has been converted into gallery space. Most of the galleries sell the work of artists from Mexico City and beyond. But some of the galleries are spaces where artists are both working and selling their work, and the floor is spattered with paint, and easels hold paintings in various stages of completion. Usually,...
Too many vacation rentals. Banks buying houses. Committed and hardworking Department of Revenue staff. There are an awful lot of options for who and what to blame for the steep property tax appraisals that many of us received in the mail the last few weeks. But I’ll tell you about the best kept secret in Montana this summer … the Republican supermajority could have prevented this. Let’s look at how. Last week, I attended the Department of Revenue’s community meeting in Helena about our property tax appraisals. People were fr...
Montana Democrats are out in full force trying to convince Montanans that they want to reduce your taxes. This is far from the truth as their actions in the legislative session speak much louder than their words now. When they had the opportunity to support giving Montana resident taxpayers $900 million back in income and property taxes (up to nearly $4,000 per family), only two Democrat legislators in the entire Legislature voted for the rebates. The rest of the Democrats wanted to keep your money and spend it to grow...
Editor: In recent news, you have all been reading and talking about Tom Patrick being arrested and charged with multiple felonies related to the derailment on his property east of Havre. I am amazed that in our society today, if anyone hears the word gun, we get excited and that is exactly what happened. Tom Patrick and any men or women who are a U.S. citizens have a constitutional right to own a firearm, carry a firearm, and defend themselves and property with a firearm. Tom Patrick, like many of us Montana landowners will...
Ah, yes, night life. Just those two words are evocative of many experiences. The Prom. Many people have been traumatized for life by simple high school dances. The intention, learning socialization skills, is honorable. The actuality can be, uh, nightmare material for a lifetime. Dining and dancing in later life. Probably a mixed bag for most of us. Some nights quite pleasurable and others cringe-causing. Normal. Walking the floor over you. Babies are born. Night life takes...
I’m writing this on my birthday and feeling more than usually grateful. “What do you want to do?” my husband, Peter, asks, as he always does on my birthday. Peter refuses to celebrate his own birthday, but he only applies the no-birthday rule to himself. I am free to celebrate any way I want — so long as I don’t expect any kind of surprise from him. I don’t. And so I tried to think of what would make my day special, and it was hard. Because, these days, all my days are pr... Full story
Gently down the stream. Well, I try. I try to remember the water is moving. Downstream. Now and then I am compelled to turn my boat and battle the currents upstream. The currents always batter me back into submission. Well, I had to try. Floating downstream is so much easier. Water is movement. Movement is change. Change is neither positive nor negative. Neither good nor bad. We give it those meanings, out of the experiences and perceptions, each according to how we choose to...
Las Vegas card sharks, Mississippi Riverboat gamblers, and Churchill Downs handicappers are pleased that Gov. Greg Gianforte and Montana’s Republican legislators pulled a fast one on Montana homeowners in the 2023 session. Earlier this year, they permanently raised state residential property taxes by 43 percent — $81 million a year, and $162 million over the two-year state budget cycle. Then they pocketed our money. (Just look at your residential property appraisal notice — your home’s value and taxes are soaring as your sp...
Montanans recently received an unpleasant reminder of the perils of bad tax policy in their mail. Spending significant amounts of time in Granite County, I had the displeasure of seeing friends and family face average reappraisals topping 60 percent. Suppose we dive into tax policy developed by the Montana legislative super-majority. We’ll discover a distressing pattern: Working-class homeowners are subjected to massive permanent tax increases, while large corporations enjoy tax relief offset by the aforementioned workers. I...
I was reluctant to come back from Mexico this spring, knowing it would still be cold and wet and cloudy. But I’d gotten used to looking for pretty things while in Mexico. I wanted to share the festivals and the art and the colors. I’d been taking pictures and sharing them on Facebook so my friends and family could see a little bit of the world that surrounded me. Then I got back up north, and it seemed like everything had turned to gray. “This is not a reason to stop takin...
I’m a lawyer and interested in politics. Fortunately, I’ve been able to stay out of Montana tax law for my career, except at a very high level. Is the tax fair? Does it hurt or help those who can least afford to pay? That’s what most democrats ask. This changed when I, like all other Montana homeowners, got my reappraisal notice from Gov. Greg Gianforte’s Department of Revenue and learned my property values had skyrocketed. That, itself, wasn’t news to me, as I watched property sales go out the roof post-pandemic, when out-...
As a proud defender and lover of public land, I have cast deciding votes for Montanans to hike, fish and hunt some of the largest expansions of public land in decades while keeping Montana farmers and ranchers on the landscape. I was recently made aware of a social media campaign soliciting money claiming to fight for interests that I support and will continue to support: local control and public lands. In reality, this campaign would only line the pockets of liberal lawyers to sue me in a case that deserves immediate...
