Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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The national teacher shortage is certainly felt in districts across Montana. When I entered the teaching profession eighteen years ago, it seemed that most teaching jobs were competitive with several qualified applicants seeking the same position. Today, hundreds of vacancies remain across the state according to “Montana Jobs for Teachers,” found at the Office of Public Instruction website. Montana students need and deserve a quality education, yet many districts cannot fill positions to provide in-person instruction by certified teachers. In H...
The United Nations designates February 6 of each year as an "International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation." This year, in remarks accompanying his Angelus prayer before a crowd at St. Peter's Square, Pope Francis denounced the practice of involuntary female circumcision, saying that it "demeans the dignity of women and gravely undermines their physical integrity." For some reason, though, the UN doesn't designate an "International Day of Zero Tolerance for Male Genital Mutilation," nor to my knowledge has the Holy Father...
Canadian truckers on Saturday answered a big 10-4 to gathering in Ottawa, Ontario to protest against cross-border vaccine mandates. As of Jan. 22, the Biden administration has required all truck drivers who cross US borders to be fully vaccinated. The mandate applies to all essential, nonresident travelers crossing US land borders, including government and emergency response officials, according to Insider. As of Jan. 15, the Canadian government has planned to mandate all Canadian truckers seeking to cross the border from the United States to...
In an age where people are falling all over themselves to divulge their most personal information to the world at large through social media and where people willingly give their permission to internet search engines like Google to gather and sell their personal data it seems almost absurd to worry about the right to privacy. But the difference in giving up your privacy and having your privacy taken away is significant, and that is why it is frightening to me to see elected officials in Montana and elsewhere belittle its importance and plot to...
At their meeting on Friday, January 21, members of the St. Mary/Milk River Working Group expressed great appreciation for Senator Jon Tester’s success in securing $100 million in the Bi-partisan Infrastructure Bill, which he helped negotiate, to jump-start the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the St. Mary/Milk River conveyance system, primarily the St. Mary Diversion Dam. Ever since the St. Mary/Milk River Working Group was first convened in 2001 by Lieutenant Governor Karl Ohs, little progress had been made to secure funding for the n...
• Melvin LeRoy Vegge, 82, of Glasgow, Montana passed away January 28, 2022 at Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital in Glasgow, Montana. Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. Friday, February 4, 2022 at First Lutheran Church with Pastor Scott Kiehn officiating. Burial will follow at Highland Cemetery. Condolences may be left for the family at bellmortuarymontana.com....
As if tax season weren't already a hassle, now the IRS has gone full on "Big Brother." As of this summer, visitors to the IRS website needing to access the Child Tax Credit Update Portal, check online accounts, get their tax transcript, receive an ID Protection PIN or view an online payment agreement will be forced to create an ac accounts, which require an email address and password to access, will no longer be accessible as of this summer. Now, taxpayers will be forced to provide ID.me with...
If there’s one thing Montanans are about, it’s common sense. We work hard, play by the rules and don’t like when Washington elites impose laws that go against what works for Montana. That’s why I fought against President Biden and the Democrats’ attempt to pass their partisan bill to enact a federal takeover of elections every step of the way—because what they were trying to do didn’t make sense, and it’s not what Montanans wanted. In Montana, thanks to the leadership of Governor Greg Gianforte and Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, the M...
The American Prairie Reserve (APR), aka American Prairie Foundation, aka American Prairie, continues to struggle with its tattered public image and is now engaged in a media flurry to convince wild bison opponents of its many virtues by trotting out spin doctors willing to repeat the gospel according to APR’s playbook. The most recent spin effort appeared in a 1-15-2022 Lewistown News Argus opinion piece by Gene Walborn who recites a number of economic and public contributions made by APR to confirm its neighborliness being expressed in the r...
As we flip the calendar page to a New Year, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact our health and daily lives. However, as we look toward 2022, a lot has changed, and it is important to remember that we have many more tools available now to control the virus now than we did at this time last year. Millions of people across the globe and over 545,000 Montanans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, preventing serious disease and slowing the spread of COVID in our communities. These vaccines have been a true triumph of vaccine...
The Jan. 13 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to block the Biden Administration from implementing its Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) COVID-19 vaccine mandate on private businesses with 100 or more employees is a huge win for civil liberties. The ruling was 6-3. Still, it could have been better. In a separate 5-4 ruling, SCOTUS has allowed the Biden Administration to implement its Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) COVID-19 vaccine mandate on healthcare workers in facilities that...
This is one of the Campaign promises kept in the 2020 elections. One party promised to kill Keystone Pipeline, stop drilling, and to import more oil. They kept that promise, and we are paying for that. In Michigan, they are trying to Stop Propane supplies to 1/3 of the state for heating. (Enbridge Line 5). Just remember what you get when elections come around. It does make a difference....
One perennial proposal in the ongoing "fight" (actually more a set of dueling theatrical productions a la professional wrestling) over "election integrity" is a requirement that voters produce official, government-issued identification documents, complete with photo, at polling places. Anyone who's ever worked door security at a nightclub (yes, I have) knows that possession of a card with a photo vaguely resembling the person possessing it is no guarantee of identity. And polling places have a built-in advantage over nightclubs: EVERYONE has...
One of the great motion pictures of all time was the 1939 Academy Award blockbuster directed by the legendary Frank Capra called Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The movie was based on an unpublished manuscript by Lewis R. Foster with the title, “The Gentleman from Montana.” Columbia pictures offered the leading role to Montana actor Gary Cooper who turned it down, so the Mr. Smith character was accepted by the young up-and-coming actor, Jimmy Stewart. The plot is that the naïve and idealistic Jefferson Smith, a popular boys camp counselor, is app...
Well I opened my gas bill for December today... Cuss words. I had expected the bill to be larger than normal because I keep my thermostat at around 65 degrees, which is about 90 degrees warmer than it has been outside on those -30 degree days. Still. Holy shiitake mushrooms. Even running the air-conditioning in Arizona on 120+ degree days during the summer months pales in comparison with what this costs. That led me to think about why the bill is so high. I don’t crank the thermostat up to unholy temps. I wear a jacket and socks in my living r...
“And how about the Federal government? Well, unsurprisingly, it managed to keep spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need,” U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) says in the 2021 “Festivus”’ Report on Government Waste, an annual compilation of how the federal government wastes taxpayer money on often absurd programs. So how much did our esteemed representatives and senators waste this year? A whopping $52,598,515,585 in government waste, according to the Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight (ETSO) Subcommittee for the Homeland Secu...
You can learn a lot by listening to what someone has to say, especially if you disagree with them. I’m not talking about learning only about what issue they might be talking about, I mean that you can learn a lot about the person you’re listening to, you learn to respect them as a person, and I think it goes the other way, too, that they learn to respect you. My awakening about the benefits of listening came around 1993 when I returned a phone call to an irate constituent. I had been in the Montana House of Representatives for a few years and...
It's only early January, and already this 2022 thing is obviously not working out. With the "omicron variant" of COVID-19 upon us, politicians and public health authorities are already off on their next round of COVID-19 Hokey Pokey: You put your school closures in. You pull your mask mandates out. You put your rising case numbers in, and you shake them all about. You do the COVID-19 Hokey Pokey and you order people around. That's what it's all about. A successful COVID-19 Hokey Pokey this time around requires ignoring the fact that, even allow...
In modern society, the institution of marriage has been and continues to be, under attack. What was once a sacred and holy joining of man and wife has become something people dabble in and abandon when the going gets tough. Perhaps vows should be changed from "For better or worse, until death do us part" to "until things get hard or I don't like your face anymore." Such a holy union has become a cheapened commodity, almost like purchasing a car. Don't like the way the transmission is acting up?...
In August of 2020, we wrote an opinion opposing Modern Monetary Theory (or MMT, the “too good to be true” idea that the federal government can spend unlimited amounts of money, regardless of revenue, in order to benefit the country and the economy). We disagreed with MMT on the strongest terms. Since that time, the federal government has added $8.4 trillion dollars to our national debt, which now stands at $29.2 trillion. We appealed to the common sense that the government cannot fix everything, own everything, or control everything. We war...
On December 17, the US House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis released a series of emails between outgoing National Institute of Health Director Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In the emails, Collins refers to the authors of something called "The Great Barrington Declaration" as "fringe epidemiologists" and states his desire for "a quick and devastating published takedown" of its premises. Collins defended his characterization and call for action on Fox News Sunday,...
Growing up in the desert sands of Arizona, there was no such thing as a "white Christmas." One particular Dec. 25 within the last decade or so was in the upper 80s or lower 90s. That was a strange and hot day. The only "snow" we ever got was from a wealthy family living down in the valley who imported tons of shaved ice to their property once a year and invited area kids to come and sled and play. Now, I live in opposite land. As I write this, it is a balmy 14 degrees outside, according to the...
With the unrelenting talk about election fraud, I’ve decided now to clear my conscience and disclose that I voted twice for President in 1996. No, it wasn’t an act of voter fraud. As a delegate to the Republican convention that year, I voted to nominate Bob Dole as the Republican candidate. I voted for him again at my polling place in Whitefish in the general election. Colin Powell, who I felt could have been a great and unifying President, was my first choice that year, but I was more than comfortable with Dole. My primary reason for that was...
"There's scientific consensus, US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said in a 2019 livestream on climate change, "that the lives of children are going to be very difficult. And it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: Is it OK to still have children?" Less than three years later, AOC's mad at US Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) for suggesting that perhaps Congress limit itself to one or two, rather than three, federal subsidies (from among a child tax credit, paid leave, or "universal" child care) in its multi-trillion do...
For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, I decided it was high time to see a movie the way they are intended to be seen - in a movie theater. So, on a recent Friday night, I took my son Austin over to Valley Cinemas in downtown Glasgow to watch "Ghostbusters: Afterlife." I will give a review on that movie later in the column. First thing to know if you have never been to the Valley Cinemas before, take cash. They don't except debit or credit cards. Second, there is plenty of elbow r...
