Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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A few weeks back, Donald Trump implemented a tariff on imported steel and aluminum that instantly sent the free market capitalists and agricultural community into a head spin. Uncertain as to what the tariff’s will actually accomplish, Trump’s economic advisor immediately resigned following the announcement after spending, or wasting, most of his tenure trying to block those exact tariffs. Not surprisingly, Trump ran on a nationalist agenda that included closed borders, torn up trade agreements, and U.S. industry protectionism. Some in the Rep...
And so it seemed that Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan forgot the platform that an entire Caucus of Republicans ran on platforms of fiscal responsibility, and as such with the passage of tax cuts and a federal spending deal that will cost $300 billion. It flies almost directly in the face of every member of the Tea Party, Freedom Caucus, and, as he put on full display during his late-night filibuster, Sen. Rand Paul’s entire purpose for being in office. It is easy to explain away the ideals Republicans are currently touting against the ones t...
I cannot for the life of me figure out why everyone is freaking out over Ram’s use of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Speech in their Super Bowl Ad. For one the Ad had a good message. Two it followed a long line of nostalgia driven ads by Ram aimed at firing people up today using nostalgic motivation. And lastly the message was a good thing, and whether your selling a brand, or garnering support for a cause the message still matters. The ad uses a sermon given by Dr. King exactly 50 years to the day earlier. So, on February 4th, 1968, those same wor...
Over the past month it was made public that the Interior Department, the one run by Ryan Zinke, proposed the“disposition of federal real property,” in an effort to pay for infrastructure projects. Zinke of course denied it, and has recently told Field and Stream, Outdoor Life and Sportsmen’s groups that there was no such plan to sell off public lands. The leaked proposal contradicting the promises of the administration is not new, but it is still concerning. Once again, Zinke has played second fiddle to Trump’s tormentors, I mean adviser...
In case you were unaware, the U.S. Government shut down over the weekend, and almost nothing came of it. In what was more or less political theater in which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was able to use words like “negotiating with Jell-O” to describe talks with President Trump, and everyone tried to brand a hashtag that more or less went #(insert name of responsible party)shutdown it was blandly uneventful and anti-climactic. In brief, Democrats caved under political fear, and Republicans promised to tackle DACA next month. The poi...
It is not strange to think of Trump’s actions as that of a ratings junky. He brags about crowds, ratings, favor with celebrities and politicians and the like, but he really is tone deaf to modern America. Whether he is making broad ethnic assertions about minority groups, calling Mexicans immigrants with generalized derogatory terms, having Freudian fights with dictators about the size and function of their, ahem, nuclear buttons, or referring, allegedly of course, to African countries in a profane way, Trump just keeps falling flat with the b...
I can comically recall the issues Republicans rail on and on about every day. The deficit is a national security issue, lower taxes, less regulations, more local input in government, less environmental conservation, no federal land grabs or federal lands period. This local control is a conservative hallmark of less government, or at least more self-government, and in most cases Republicans support it as the backbone of the federalist system we constitutionalized in America. Why then, do Republicans insist on federal criminal enforcement of...
The year to come is an election year and as such it is a great year for politicians, pundits, campaign strategists and politically oriented columnists like yours truly. The rest of you, on the other hand, will be forced to suffer through campaign ads and political stumps (assuming any of the candidates visit Glasgow more than once this time around, but I digress). For those of you not as enthralled by the gladiator show that is primaries and general elections the following should catch you up on the Republican hopefuls for the Senate...
I wont say that 2017 was the worse year on record. There was no bubonic plague, no World War III, and no Holocaust, so that should stand for something. This in spite of threats of isolationism, Twitter battles that could launch nuclear weapons, and petty fights over non-issues that have shaken the global order and alienated our closest friends. I will say then that 2017 was not a good year for much more than the stock market, corporations and Bitcoin. So what will the country face in 2018? What will we take on full charge, and try our hardest...
The decision to reduce Bears Ears and Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monuments came as no surprise to the Utah delegation, Utah Republicans, and those familiar with Washington swamp creatures and horse traders. Nor did it surprise those who look to develop those regions for industry and mining. It was a surprise to some observers to see Ryan Zinke go along with the idea in such a rank and file manner that one could hardly remember the lowly outsider who stood up to the Republican Party’s position on selling off federal lands. Both O...
Once upon a time candidate Trump said he wanted to raise taxes on the extremely wealthy, lower taxes on the middle class, and not raise the deficit. Of course the conservative base loved the idea, especially the blue collar workers who thought they had been left behind by elitism. Unfortunately that did not happen. Last week Republicans, including fiscal hawks like Rand Paul and others, voted to decrease taxes for corporations, pass through businesses and increase the deficit by over $1.4 trillion. They are offsetting the true cost of those...
I’m not entirely sure I should be the one to write on this topic. However, I am sure someone needs to say something about how they felt as they watched President Donald J. Trump during a ceremony at the White House Nov. 27. While honoring Navajo code talkers, Trump referred to Massachusetts' sitting senator Elizabeth Warren as "Pocahontas" - a term commonly understood to be derogatory towards Native Americans. Neither deserved nor likely wanted his comment at the ceremony. What President Trump fails to realize is that while his actions, w...
I was most pleasantly surprised the other week when Donald Trump struck a deal raising the debt ceiling in return for Harvey disaster relief. It was a rare feeling, what with the hurricanes, the beating of war drums, and the countless other apocalyptic heralding scenes gracing our social media feeds and news broadcasts near daily. I was almost taken aback by the news headline “Trump Makes Deal With Democrats,” not that I was shocked he would leave behind his party leadership, for which I know he has no loyalty nor does he share any ide...
So I am usually kind of proud of how we as a state have to keep a balanced budget, and cannot over spend our capability pay. It is a fruitful endeavor for sure when applied with the logic and foresight of a well-crafted budget. What I do not support, however, is the arbitrary and hardship inducing budget cuts that loom in our state’s near future. As of this month, the state is ordering 10 percent budget cuts across the board from all its state agencies. That means that MDT, DOJ, DMA, and every other agency will share in cuts arbitrarily a...
I’m not particularly shocked at where we are in September. Seems like Congress checked out for the summer, and the world kind of chuckled like a teenager getting the house while his parents leave town. Just to recap some of the things that changed. North Korea demonstrated an ability to nuke the contiguous United States, and a desire to provoke Japan. They showed off ICBMs and tested a hydrogen bomb nine times more powerful than anything they have tested to date. Second, the western half of the country is burning down. Notably, one of the m...
I can think back to the worst moments in our history, and find some inspiring tales. “Give me liberty, or give me death,” Patrick Henry. “For I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country,” George Washington. “My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth,” Abraham Lincoln. Or, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” John F. Kennedy. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate;...
For some time now my wife and I have planned to see the solar eclipse on Aug. 21, in Wyoming where the sun will be covered in its totality. My reasoning was that this was an awesome chance for our children to experience something entirely unique and pretty rare. Secretly, though, I was overly excited to experience the natural phenomenon first hand, which I have wanted to see after experiencing a partial solar eclipse at the age of five as a child. I thought it was a no brainer that everyone would want to see such a thing in its entirety and...
It comes as a surprise to me when I find that people I know and trust support the current state of the country. I try to pry information as to why, what things have been accomplished, and what goods have been done? But I honestly never get a straight answer. Mostly I get agitation that I don’t see it. I hear constantly that this is better than the previous eight years, but I don’t see how. The Republican administration has pursued a hated health care policy to failing ends. They looked petty and fool-hearted the entire time. Especially whi...
Austin Knudsen painted Sen. Jon Tester on this opinion page last week as a dark money hoarder, as the one man in D.C. to utilize the seedy under belly of wealthy financiers to gain political capital. I was not impressed. First off, while attacking a sitting Senator from Montana, for something Republicans support as hypocritical, he came off as, well, hypocritical. It would be like condemning him for supporting the second amendment. Second, he provides nothing to back it up, but just layers on the buzz-words and the hypocrisy. In the present...
I had to laugh at the site of Gianforte and Daines on horseback touring a coal mine near Colstrip. It is laughable because the Montana way of life, the outdoors or agriculture, and coal are not the best of bedfellows. The other issue with Greg Gianforte, Steve Daines, Ryan Zinke and Donald Trump supporting the coal industry at all cost is that it isn’t their call to make. Utility companies are the main consumers of coal, and we are the main consumers of energy. Coal has grown in price and as a result has become nonviable as a competitor to n...
It was especially interesting to watch the way Trump mouthpieces like Spicer, Conway and that new woman, I forgot already, contemptuously handle the questions being asked by the press. It has been so especially irritating that even Anderson Cooper, regarded as more reserved and professional, rolled his eyes at Conway’s dodging and bickering over the questions being posed about our President's actions. It was ridiculous. It was as if the White House was asking ‘who are you to ask these questions? Who are you to question the President of the Uni...
And so it was I found myself hating the Billionaire Tech Mogul who wants to hoard the world for his own benefit, and laughing at the thought of voting for the Cowboy Troubadour Poet going to fight consequential battles in Washington D.C. with a guitar and love first attitude. Neither candidate was appealing to me in anyway. I was beginning to despair that I would have to vote for the Montana Donald Trump or the aloof artist who can’t stand by his own views and commitments, but I digress. It wasn’t until I was reminded of the Libertarian can...
Donald Trump learned an important lesson about being a populist with a Conservative House. His Party does not actually support him or his views. Conservative evangelical style Tea Party Republicans are not necessarily prepared to go along with Trump’s idea that he alone gets to decide America’s future. Nor are they willing to concede their extremist ideology in exchange for making their Party look good or get a “win”. The result has been dramatic. On March 24, the long touted, and dramatically over-blown, repeal and replace came up to the point...
The State of the Montana Budget Side by Side In this ongoing segment, Glasgow-based columnists Michael Burns and Alec Carmichael have agreed to square off on issues of national and international significance. Less a debate format than an opportunity to feature in-depth discussion, "Side by Side" will feature structured analysis of current events complete with fact-checking, editorial support and, when necessary, informal arbitration. To suggest a topic for our duo, write to [email protected]. So Montana’s House passed a budget. Republicans s...
The Affordable Care Act: Repeal and Replace In this ongoing segment, Glasgow-based columnists Michael Burns and Alec Carmichael have agreed to square off on issues of national and international significance. Less a debate format than an opportunity to feature in-depth discussion, "Side by Side" will feature structured analysis of current events complete with fact-checking, editorial support and, when necessary, informal arbitration. To suggest a topic for our duo, write to [email protected]. When I think about government waste, I often think...
