Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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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...
China has a plan. It wants to be the dominant technology country by 2035. If you look, it’s clear to see how they’re executing on that plan. They’re massively investing in hardware and software development to catch up to, and eventually overtake, the United States. If they’re successful, we’ll experience serious ramifications for our economy and national security. We’ve been the world technological leader for so long it’s understandable that many Americans take it for granted. What’s amazing is it happened without any state-backed ce...
Every once in a while the public’s attention is drawn to an issue with a name that few people understand and many cannot even pronounce; enter “infrastructure”. Whatever it is, we are now going to spend 1.2 trillion dollars on it in the next few years so perhaps it’s time to think about it. Since “infra” means “below” I think about infrastructure as the foundation on which our society is built. There are two types of infrastructure, commonly called hard and soft. I was taught the difference between them by a mechanic when I was complaining abo...
Tuesday marked the 80th Anniversary of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, a day which will forever "live in infamy." It is hard to believe eight decades have gone by already, and there are fewer and fewer veterans who were around that day to tell the story. In 2016, I interviewed Tom Berg of Port Townsend, Washington over the phone. He was in Hawaii for 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor attack. Berg enlisted in the Navy at the age of 18 in 1940. He said he requested assignment to the USS...
Memorials to Stephen Sondheim didn't have to search far to find parallels between the musical West Side Story and a United States disunited by class and ethnic strife in 2021. Sondheim's lyrics "Everywhere Grime in America, Terrible Time in America" became Jacobin's headline for a sixtieth anniversary retrospective on the film version two weeks before his passing on November 26. Meanwhile, 2021 academic contentions that "white identity is intrinsic to Western ideas about liberty" may as well have borrowed the couplet "Life is all right in...
As we approach Christmas, we have one request to Montana’s federal delegation: please do everything in your power to stop the reckless taxing and spending proposal currently working its way through Congress. The biggest gift Montana could receive from Washington, D.C., this holiday season is a dose of common sense, not more federal taxes and debt. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said it’s his goal to pass President Biden’s $2 trillion tax and spend bill before Christmas. Meanwhile, inflation is getting worse, billions of dollars have...
Just after the mostly peaceful protest at the nation's Capitol Building on Jan. 6, for the first time in my life I felt unsafe in my own country. Not because of the hordes of disgruntled American citizens protesting the presidential election, or their breeching of the federal building, but because many media outlets used it as justification to figuratively attack people just like me. I am a white male conservative, and a protestant. I am also a dad, so that automatically makes me a part of the...
For many years, my family has had farm land under the Glasgow Irrigation District. That is part of the larger Milk River Irrigation System that brings water all across the Hi-line, over 700 miles from the Mountains to the irrigated acres in Blaine, Hill, Phillips and Valley Counties and to many cities and communities for their drinking water. A structure on that system at St. Mary failed some years back. The Bureau of Reclamation has been working to get it properly repaired. I, and I am sure...
Does the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, who was accused of murdering two men and wounding another at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, broaden the way for Americans to take the law into their own hands? Can individual Americans, by claiming that they felt their life was in danger become judge, jury, and executioner and not worry unduly about the consequences? This raises a question, if the law is a matter of personal interpretation, who can you trust? Imperfect as it is, the American legal system...
You've seen the headlines. So Have I. For example, a November 23 story in my local paper (the Gainesville, Florida Sun) : "Gainesville man charged with murder for Sunday shooting in dispute over marijuana deal." It wasn't a huge marijuana deal. It was a $180 sale. The seller apparently shot a buyer who tried to drive off without paying. Other common headlines of the "police blotter" variety include people put in handcuffs and hauled off to jail for buying, selling, or possessing a common plant....
I recently had a conversation about how the political cycle never really pauses anymore. For my generation, this is par for the course. CNN launched not too long before I was born, so the constant news cycle is nothing new. You can tell, however, what drives ratings because the powers that be will beat whatever poor horse it is to death, ignoring other more relevant news. In the early 1990s, it was the OJ Simpson case. My fifth grade class watched the verdict live. Our teacher figured it was something we should witness. Thinking back, it...
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 my bipartisan infrastructure bill that was signed into law by the pre...
As Thanksgiving approaches, I usually take a little time to think about who and what I'm thankful for and express my. That seems to be the point, after all. This year, for various reasons, my thoughts and appreciation turn toward journalists, newspapers, and other news media. Sometimes the people and institutions we rely on to keep us informed get a bad rap, and sometimes they deserve it. When the Washington Post and New York Times act more as stenographers for the political class than reporters of the facts, we all lose. When trusted (by...
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 ranchers out of business and disregards the interests of workers...
This past Veteran’s Day weekend there was a Copeland Victory Rally held in Washington, D.C. to thank and honor Veterans and all who patriotically serve our country in many different ways. Their Victory TV channel, which is on Dish or Direct TV, brings the daily reports on current news from a Christian and constitutional reporting twice a day. Also, a program called Flashpoint twice a week has a panel consisting of spirit-filled men and women who address much truth from the different five fold ministries given in the book of Ephesians. They d...
