Good morning; on the Beacon today, Ray Thompson once ran one of the Flathead Valley’s biggest employers, but after Semitool was sold to Applied Materials Inc. last December, he found enough time to pursue an endeavor he had considered years earlier: the purchase of Sykes in downtown Kalispell. The winner of the legislative race for House District 8, which encompasses downtown Kalispell, is perennially difficult to predict – but this year, it’s downright impossible. At first blush the title alone might cause consternation and hesitance about purchasing Claudia Cunningham’s recently released book “Biting Back – A No-Nonsense, No Garlic Guide to Facing the Personal Vampires in Your Life.” And Dave Skinner weighs in on wolf policy in Washington.
Tim and Edra Blixseth owe the state $57 million in taxes on the money they drained from the Yellowstone Club and spent on luxury jets, cars and yachts that they wrote off as business expenses, Montana tax officials say. The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the case of the only known Canadian on death row in the United States. The Air Force has chosen the Montana Air National Guard’s base in Great Falls as the preferred location for a new mission for four C-27J transport aircraft. Lenders seized more U.S. homes this summer than in any three-month stretch since the housing market began to bust in 2006. But many of the foreclosures may be challenged in court later because of allegations that banks evicted people without reading the documents. A group analyzing the impact on Libby of the criminal case of W.R. Grace & Co. convened Wednesday at the University of Montana for the 20th annual Society of Environmental Journalists conference, a five-day event hosted by UM to discuss environmental issues that shape the Rocky Mountain West. North-central Billings mailboxes have been flooded with attack ads and candidate literature as the most expensive legislative race in state history hits full speed. Medicaid, the state-federal program that pay medical bills for the poor and disabled, covers about 99,600 people in Montana — its highest level ever. The Schweitzer administration is considering a test run of having a private, managed-care firm run Medicaid, the state’s $900 million health care program for the poor.